This exit poll is truly devastating for the Tories

If Tories find some comfort in getting into three figures in the exit poll, they are kidding themselves.

Not only are the Tories on course to record a significantly lower number of seats than it won at its modern nadir of 1997, but it has lost its parliamentary monopoly over right-of-centre opinion too.

Yes, it looks like there will be sufficient Conservative MPs to put together a workable shadow cabinet and frontbench. Yes, it will be a Tory who leads the interrogations of Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs rather than bungee-jumping Sir Ed Davey.

But Nigel Farage must be presumed to be home and hosed in Clacton, and to be taking at least a handful of fellow Reformers into the Commons given the forecast of 13 seats for his latest insurgency.

He has for now completely captured the once totemic Tory issue of immigration control, made a big grab for the mantle of Britain’s chief tax-cutting champion and placed himself in the vanguard of a growing movement prepared to resist the dash to carbon net zero too.