Campaign winners and losers

WINNERS

AMBUSH INTERVIEWS: In the past these have taken the form of asking a politician the cost of a pint of milk. In this campaign they have been elevated to an entire new interviewing art form. Interviewers ask politicians facts and figures questions to which the interviewers already know the answers. So it's a trap. An example of the genre - dating from before the campaign, as it happens - was asking Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, to name the French foreign minister. She couldn't. (As everybody knows, it was at the time Jean-Marc Ayrault, and is now Jean-Yves Le Drian.)

JEREMY CORBYN: He began the campaign being perceived as the Tories' greatest asset, a liability and electoral no-hoper in whom hardly anybody in the Parliamentary Labour Party, no less, had confidence. The public has however warmed to his relaxed people-friendly style. His track record over a long career has included having tea with the cheerleaders of IRA terrorism and being a serial rebel in the Commons. His experience in government is nil. It has not mattered, or at least has not mattered as much as expected. He is what he is, just like that other outsider - Donald Trump.

His cause has been aided by a Labour manifesto which managed not to be the second longest suicide note in history (the first being Labour's 1983 manifesto under Michael Foot's leadership). A nostalgia-fest of left wing policies which everybody thought had been killed off by Tony Blair's reign of terror in which he won three consecutive general elections for Labour, it included costings to show where the money was supposed to be coming from - generally taxes and borrowing.

GREAT QUOTES: The Greens' Caroline Lucas came up with a good one during the TV debate in which Theresa "strong and stable leadership" May failed to take part. "The first rule of leadership is to show up," she said memorably. The Lib Dems' Tim Farron also showed a way with words: “Where do you think Theresa May is tonight? Take a look out of your window. She might be out there sizing up your house to pay for your social care." If the Lib Dems don't do well, a career in stand-up comedy awaits for Tim.

LAMP-POSTS: Have you seen a single election poster or placard attached to a single lamp-post in your neck of the woods? Probably not, as many councils now ban posters on street lights, street furniture, and so on, and threaten to charge anyone who flouts the ban for the cost of removing them. Sensible, perhaps, but it makes things very dull.

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LOSERS

TERRORISTS: They seek no votes, they have no mandate, and they represent nobody of reasoned mind, and yet they made two deadly interventions during the campaign. The timings of the Manchester bomb and the London Bridge terror attack may or may not have been deliberately chosen to occur during the election - who knows what goes on in the minds of these people? The manifesto is murder and hatred, and the perpetrators deluded losers with nothing to offer. The loss of life was grievous, and the nation mourned - and carried on. The pointless acts of the terrorists involved them dying pointlessly.

THERESA MAY: The general expectation continues to be that the Tories will win the general election, but there are ways of winning. The assumption that it would be all about Brexit proved wrong and the assumption that Labour would self-destruct proved wrong. As for the manifesto launch, instead of carrying the Conservatives onwards and upwards, they were put on the back foot by accusations of a "dementia tax." Having made her leadership at the core of her campaign, Mrs May, as leader, has to take responsibility for the disappointing way it unfolded - after all, if she wins a landslide, she will take the credit for that, won't she? ( And if she wins by a landslide, please disregard any of the above, and substitute the words: Mrs May ran a great campaign.)

OPINION POLLS: They gave the Tories a double digit lead at the start of the campaign which whittled down to as little as a single point at the end, according to one poll. It just shows the folly of making any decision (like, for instance, calling an election) using the opinion polls as any guide. In fact, a specially-commissioned Shropshire Star opinion poll has found that 99.3 per cent of opinion polls are rubbish and should be ignored.

TV DEBATES: A big turn off. The BBC Election Debate with Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May averaged 3.5 million viewers, less than a quarter of the viewing share. And the seven-way leaders' debate was an unwieldy format which became a shouting match with partisans in the crowd egging on their favourites.

DIANE ABBOTT: It does politicians no harm to be able to take a joke, but when you become the joke, that's it, unless you are Boris Johnson. Rare interviews with Diane Abbott became a sport for broadcasters, brazenly setting up opportunities for her to make herself look foolish. Labour says she is unwell and is taking a break. It is difficult to see how she could inspire confidence in high office. The comeback from ridicule is long and hard.

UKIP: We'll have to see how they do, of course. But it looks like they've had their day soaring in the sun. And then their wings melted.