This is the best summary I could come up with:

It seems a failing, until you remember Theresa May – fighting what was the worst campaign in living memory, before Rishi Sunak asked her to hold his beer – threw away a 20-point poll lead in 2017 by proposing a social care policy that instantly became the “dementia tax”.

Yet now the Conservatives are falling apart, reduced to warning of a Labour “supermajority” – misusing the term that does not, as Grant Shapps seems to think, mean “a really big majority”, but one capable of overriding a constitutional veto – as they plead with the voters for mercy.

History suggests the Lib Dems do best when disaffected Tory voters feel safe casting a ballot that will put a Labour prime minister in Downing Street.

Tactical voting depends, yes, on collective loathing of the Tories, but also a Labour alternative palatable to the broadest possible number: that rarely means a leader who stirs the passions of the party faithful.

If he gets his mandate, he could use it as blanket permission to pursue a range of serious policy shifts about which he stayed mum during the campaign – whether on investment in infrastructure and public services or resetting the relationship with the European Union – all in the name of growing the economy.

But, given the scale of the task that will confront the next government – a social fabric that lies in tatters, a weak economy, ailing public services and a country that feels broken – it is no guide for how that power should be used.

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