Gradually, then suddenly. That is how Ernest Hemingway famously described a character’s bankruptcy. That was how the 14-year Tory hegemony of Britain came to a brutal end.

If the exit poll released on the stroke of 10pm is even half right, this is less a changing of the executive, more a punishment beating – and one that is well deserved. A 170-seat majority for Keir Starmer and his refashioned Labour party, which is projected to land 410 seats. A drubbing for the Tories, pegged back to 131.

The Tory party has never suffered a defeat like it. It poses big questions for the most successful party in British history. The stakes are existential. It may not survive.

And the miserable news for Tories into the wee small hours is that it will almost certainly be more than half right. Prof John Curtice and his team are the bedrock of these projections and he got it right in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019. No one stole this election. The Tories faced the electorate and, via the ballot box,........

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