Did I miss anything?

Perhaps not the ideal weekend to go sailing then. Labour's worst results since when? 1968? 1918? Livingstone finally expunged from City Hall, Tory vote shares hitting the middle forties, Labour getting wiped out in the South and Midlands, the Tories winning seats and councils in the North. Happy days.

Two thoughts occur. The first was a letter in the Telegraph that said, effectively - look how well the Tories have done in the election. Now imagine how much better they would have done if they had elected a right-wing leader instead of Cameron. It's about as good an illustration of the fundamental Heffer error as you could imagine.

The second was a look back to the Ealing/Southall bye-election of last summer. It was in the height of the Brown bounce, Tory hopes of a victory were unrealistically ramped up, and third place duly ensued. It was a bad result for the Tories, though a long way short of disastrous. Solicitous leftist blogs piled in to offer sympathy. If they were so keen to "hug a Tory" after we failed to win two seats, what on earth are we expected to do for them after their worst results in 40 years? The mind boggles rather.

Apparently, during the summer Tory malaise, Labour MPs were gleefuly texting each other the rather cryptic message "PODWAS". It stood for Poor Old Dave, What a Shame. I suspect that the S in POGWAS stands for something else.