Chris Mason: A spectacular night for Labour

This is a spectacular victory for Labour.

Spectacular given where they came from - the doldrums. Their result in 2019 was their worst since 1935.

But spectacular too by any metric, at any time, in any context, because the challenge they faced to win by a smidgen was Himalayan.

It's "the Starmer tsunami" as one shellshocked opponent put it.

The story of this election is one of an electorate showing a ruthless determination to eject the Conservatives.

In plenty of places that meant electing a Labour MP.

In a fair chunk of others it meant electing a Liberal Democrat MP.

And there are a heck of a lot of votes for Reform UK.

Sir Keir Starmer will be prime minister by lunchtime, taking to Downing Street a colossal majority.

Expect his tone, outside Number 10 at around lunchtime, to be magnanimous, understated.

Sir Keir is emphasising the need to return what he sees as stability and civility to politics.

It looks like - despite their colossal win - that Labour’s share of the vote isn’t colossal, so a pitch from the soon-to-be prime minister that tacitly acknowledges that is probably sensible.

Not least because winning big can create expectations that might be hard to meet.

Remember that Prime Minister Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves - as they soon will be - and the new government will confront all of the old problems that caused its predecessor so much trouble: the cost of living, the government’s finances, the tax burden, a dangerous world - and no majority, however big, can erase them.

This was a night of a thousand stories.

Politics at its heart is about human beings, and their emotions: success, failure, jubilation, anguish, regret.

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was a very high profile nocturnal casualty.

Arguably the outgoing government’s most able communicator, his voice cracking as he delivered his concession speech.

Jeremy Hunt hung on in Surrey, his voice cracking too as he spoke.

This was a night whose soundtrack was the post mortem beginning in the Conservative Party: from Robert Buckland, Mr Shapps, Penny Mordaunt and others.

There will be plenty more of that to come.

But remember, unlike the circus of Conservative psychodrama in recent years, this will be a sideshow of a tussle - a battle within an opposition party, not a governing party.

It will still matter though because millions of people will want to ensure the new government, with a big majority, is properly scrutinised and held to account, and will want the Conservative Party to play a part in that.

The big picture is this: within hours, we will soon have our fourth prime minister in under two years.

The whirlwind of British politics continues.

We live in a world of unprecedented voter volatility - more people in more places are more willing to change their minds more often and more quickly about politics than ever before.

And it has happened again.