Happy day

What a night! Our friends joined us for cocktails and eventually champagne as we gradually relaxed into believing the exit polls. They went home at 1 but Mr C and I stayed up till almost 4 when we heard our adjoining constituency of Hexham had become Labour for the first time in 100 years. When I woke at 5.30 I couldn’t resist looking at the results. And yes, I had my Portillo moment - our Tory MP had gone and all of Northumberland was red for the first time ever. She was not gracious in defeat and said if the new MP did not get the A1 duelled he’d have to deal with her. She promised this 14 years ago, was Transport Secretary under Boris Johnson but still nothing happened.

And how wonderful to have Rachel Reeves the first female Chancellor.

However I do understand that this was a vote against the Tories rather than for Labour and that Reform is a force to be scared of. I used to want PR but if we had it they’d have loads of MPs and not only 5. LibDem have 71 MPs yet the total vote for them was less than Reform. The only area the Labour vote was up was in Scotland.

We went down to Linda’s for a pooled brunch with other friends to watch our new PM give his speech and go into #10 Downing Street. It was lovely to be with like-minded people and tonight we’ll FaceTime our friends in the new Foreign Secretary’s constituency. Then an early night!