Sunak’s campaign has been a disaster from start to finish

Dry wit is a much under-appreciated quality in this age of high-impact sledgehammer communication. In an election full of sub-standard soundbites and slogans signifying almost nothing, there is an especially strong case to be grateful for the occasional appearance of wit.

There was the moment when Nigel Farage mocked the Plaid Cymru chap who was opposing a crackdown on foreign students bringing in dependents by telling him that if you had got a place as an overseas student at a British university it didn’t mean that you should be able to bring your mum. But the gold medal for LOLs must go to the retiring Conservative ex-minister Tim Loughton, who was asked on Sky News what he thought of the Tory campaign and replied with devastating under-statement: ‘I’ve seen better.’

Loughton developed his point by making a comparison with the Tory landslide defeat of 1997 in which, he said, a lot of things had gone wrong before the campaign.