Gordon Brown’s resignation — or, to be exact, his announcement that he is ready to stand down as Labour leader — was the decent thing to do for someone who has just led his party to defeat in a general election, coming second in the popular vote with only 29 per cent, and losing 91 seats.
But, as the results came in last Friday morning, Labour were not the only losers.
The Conservatives didn't win either, despite getting more votes, and more seats. Any opposition party worth its salt, taking on an unpopular, 13-year-old government after a long recession, and with the support of most of the press, should have romped home. With the leg-up that an unsophisticated voting system gives the dominant party, a mere 40 per cent of the votes would have given them an overall majority in the House of Commons. The fact that they couldn't even manage that — nudging their vote up by only 3.8 per cent — makes it clear how few British voters have been won over by the David Cameron-branded Conservatives.
But the biggest disappointment will have been felt in the Liberal Democrat camp. Despite all the media hype about 'Cleggmania' after their leader's widely-acclaimed performance in the series of TV debates, they finished the night five seats down, and their share of the vote crept up just 1 per cent to 23 per cent.
Their vote actually fell in Scotland where, in a very different political atmosphere, support for Labour was up. The 'personality politics' that favour Clegg and Cameron in Middle England play very differently north of the border, where the Tory leader's Eton vowels are an instant turn-off and where instinctive sympathy for the embattled Brown is only deepened by resentment at the London-centred media's relentlessly negative portrayal of him.
Ironically, one of the seats the Liberal Democrats lost — to Labour — was Rochdale, scene of 'bigotgate', the Prime Minister's unhappy encounter with Gillian Duffy, which was fanned into a flame by Sky News and picked up with indiscriminate glee by the other channels. Clearly, Lancashire voters are not swayed by such media froth.
Religious leaders in Britain may take pleasure in the fact that another LibDem seat to fall was that of the National Secular Society's Dr Evan Harris, a vocal and untiring opponent of anything that gives religious belief a place in the public arena. The same fate befell another prominent secularist,