The night began with the prospect of a parliament painfully divided between Left and Right. But the release of the exit polls at 10 O'clock turned that stress into a painful crushing blow to progressives. Even to the last moment, the polls had indicated a multi-party split. Yet when ballots were cast in the polling stations of England, there was a kind of sudden and astonishing shift towards the Conservatives.
In the short term, while the Conservatives form a new government without the need for the compromises of the last five years, the Left needs to find a new way forward. The most emphatic message of the night is that the Left does not have a convincing message for the people of the UK. That has played out with some dramatic losses.
Labour have lost swathes of supporters in Scotland and failed to be convincing in England. The Liberal Democrats where heavily criticised for their coalition with the Conservatives, and for a broken promise over tuition fees, and yet have lost seats by bleeding thousands of voters to the Conservatives and UKIP.
That contributes to a very complicated picture for the Left to try and understand.
Labour tacked to the Right on social issues, while sounding moderately Leftist on the economy and have barely survived outside their Northern heartland - and even lost part of it with voters swinging away from Labour to the SNP. They have lost their Scottish leader Jim Murphy, their campaign organiser Douglas Alexander and even their shadow chancellor Ed Balls.
The Lib Dems ran as a socially liberal and economically centre-right party, and have found themselves decimated. They have lost ministers and senior figures all over - Danny Alexander, Vince Cable, Ed Davies, Simon Hughes, Jo Swinson, Lynne Featherstone and many more are all gone.
This must all, surely, mean the leaderships of the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats, particularly, will have to change.
Some of the expectations that came with the prospect of a hung parliament, that many had thought was awaiting voters on the 8th May, was big political reform. Talk is still abound of constitutional change. But now, with the polls leaning to the right, it will likely be less about proportional representation and more focussed on Unionist concerns. Matters like English and Scottish votes and their role in a British Parliament and changes to the electoral boundaries will take precedence, but Federalism may still get a look in.
Teresa May of the Conservatives is already talking about life without a Lib Dem anchor - she told the BBC's election night programme that she blames the Lib Dems for holding back Conservative wishes to give the security agencies more intrusive powers of investigation.
With that announcement setting the tone, the first thing for the Left is to find a way to put together a meaningful and co-operative opposition. One that can restrain the very slim measure of control that the Conservatives will have over the Commons - and find candidates that can drum up passionate support to challenge the Conservatives at bye-elections.
The second aim, for the longer term, has to be figuring out what it is that the Left can offer to the people of the UK at a sorely divided time. Scotland is represented almost entirely by the SNP Nationalists, and England is under the control of the Conservative Unionists. Nationalism has become a very major factor once again. But above all, voters in Scotland found the SNP a more convincing representative of the Left values than Labour, and in England it seems that few were convinced that they as voters belonged with the Left at all.
References
Alberto Nardelli's 'How did the polls get it so wrong?'; in The Guardian; 8 May 2015.
Chris Mason's 'Election 2015 results: What next?'; on the BBC; 8 May 2015.
Owen Jones' 'English nationalism is out of the bottle, whoever wins'; in The Guardian; 5 May 2015.
Owen Jones, Gaby Hinsliff, Matthew d'Ancona & Anne Perkins' 'Election 2015: Guardian columnists on a shocking night'; in The Guardian; 8 May 2015.
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