A wonderful few days

I cannot recall three days where I have been so regularly uplifted.  First of all the General Election result, then its aftermath, polished off with the sweet dessert of England winning the Under-20 football World Cup, a first such triumph in a major tournament since hat trick hero Geoff Hurst and the boys hoisted the Jules Rimet trophy more than three score years ago.
All three elements had a bit of nervous tension to them.  To start off with the last, England won 1-0 against a for-once formidable Venezuela (a team who previously have fallen short in qualifying for tournaments), meaning that all the result was continually in the balance, never more so than when Venezuela were awarded a penalty (with the assistance of the 'video referee').  However, not only did Freddie Woodman (on the books of Newcastle United) save it after initially almost going under it, but he pushed it to safety too.  His opposite number in the Venezuela goal was on course for the best goalkeeper of the tournament prize but if you save a penalty in a World Cup final, then there can only be one winner.  And so, gloriously, England are World Cup winners (at Under-20 level).  Cue much fist-pumping from me.  Kudos to the BBC for broadcasting it too.
When I had a regular exercise work-out from so much fist-pumping over about two hours and much hearty laughter to boot was the General Election result.  I had gone to bed just after checking out the exit poll and would wake up the next morning to see how it panned out (this makes me a 'normal person' according to Emily Maitlis).  I was pleased with the exit poll seeing the Tories 12 short of a majority, rather than the landslide the last polls predicted and recalled how this was the YouGov poll (which used the same methodology to predict a 'Leave' win in the Brexit referendum but had been suppressed because of pollster herding) that took so much abuse - YouGov were so unnerved that they released a later different poll using the old flawed methodology.  I was warned that exit polls can be wrong and so I dreamt that the Tories had in fact secured a small majority (a humiliation in itself).
To wake up and find the exit poll was almost dead-on was by turns both brilliant and hilarious.  Solemn faces from the punditocracy proclaimed a hung parliament was bad for Britain (the same pundits who had failed miserably to predict this outcome).  For me though, a hung parliament was the best that could have been hoped for, seriously hurting the chances of a hard Brexit and five more years of Tory austerity.
Jeremy Corbyn, no longer shackled by selective media and with some media training of his own, was terrific.  Even I came close to voting for Labour (I voted Lib Dem in the end, as much a protest vote as anything).  A 40% share of the vote, the biggest since 2001.  A 12% increase in the share of the vote - the biggest for Labour since 1945.  Sure they fell short and Corbyn will be unshakeable until the next General Election (either prospect no longer so bad) but they disrupted the disastrous plans the Tories had lined up.
There were some stand-out results of the night.  Alex Salmond and SNP deputy leader Angus Robertson losing their seats and to the Tories at that.  Nick Clegg departed as Sir Vince Cable returned.  There were some earthquakes in England too. A 10% swing took out Ben Gummer, previously tipped as next Brexit Secretary, in Ipswich.  Julian Brazier, a 30 year stalwart in Canterbury, which the Tories had held for more than a hundred years, fell to the student vote as Labour took it for the first time ever.  After a third recount (with the interval of the counters being sent home through exhaustion) saw Labour beat the Conservatives for the first time since its creation in 1974 in the constituency of Kensington, the wealthiest seat in the country (albeit very unevenly spread).
Almost as noteworthy was Labour's capture of Peterborough.  There were many reasons why this was delicious.  After the successful Leave vote in the Brexit referendum, The Daily Mail (and what a humiliation for this staunch May backer) emblazoned on its front page 'Heroes of Britain' or some such guff with a big picture of a ragtag of Conservative and UKIP activists applauding the result.  There, in the middle of the photo, was Peterborough MP Stuart Jackson.  But there is more because he is a nasty piece of work.  After JK Rowling wondered aloud on Twitter on her trauma at the outcome, Jackson, gratuitously and offensively, tweeted at her, 'Deal with it.'  What an absolute dick.  And now he's lost his seat.  Interviewed later, he said he'd had a commiserating call from David Cameron but nothing from Theresa May or Conservative chairman Patrick McLoughlin.  Jackson carped, "It is poor."  Jackson should 'deal with it'.
Now the dust is starting to settle and May is trying to pretend all is business as usual but the shockwave of this humiliation and her cheerleaders in the press cannot all so be easily swept away.  For the second year running, a Conservative prime minister has called a ballot they didn't need to call for the sake of party management.  Now the knives are out and we will see for how long May can hold them off.  This vote was a smackdown to contempt and incompetence and austerity until 2025.  If it results in a softer Norway-style Brexit, then so much the better.