Boris Johnson is the big winner from the Tories’ election drubbing

I never thought I would live to see the Conservative and Unionist Party, dominator of British politics for centuries, falling to a vote share of nine per cent in a national election.

Hindsight is mind-bending, which means I now find it impossible to believe that David Cameron could ever have conceived that holding an EU referendum would bring peace, stability and strength to the divided Tories.

And as for Theresa May she will be seen by many as guilty of a strategic error to rival any in the history of this democracy, with her failure to establish what kind of withdrawal from – and future relationship with – the European Union would command a majority in the Commons before negotiating her deal with the EU.

Even so, I wonder whether Labour actually feels more bruised than the Tories today.

The point is that the collapse of the Conservative party in the EU parliamentary elections has been inevitable for weeks and also heavily discounted, even if it is still shocking to have confirmation that it received the support of fewer than one in ten voters.