THERE'S something wonderful about an electoral system that throws out its first result 47 minutes after the count begins.
It obviates the Irish situation where those results which come through quickly even if they don't make it for many hours - give a positive indication of the fortunes of one party yet prove a day later to be inaccurate.
More than once in the hours after an election, one party here has believed it was heading for power, only to find out later that the possibility of a large margin on one side can not only erode over the hours but has the dread possibility of completely reversing itself.
Where PR is not the system, illusions on the part of the losers are brief. However, this did not stop Michael Portillo from advising reporters to wait for the full count before they leaped aboard a passing conclusion. Unfortunately for him, his seat was already gone at this time, although he didn't know it (I can't help wondering if many Tories shed any tears at this result) and most of the reporters were searching for synonyms for "landslide".
In every political party there are people who always get sent out during bad times, either because they are old dogs for hard roads, like Michael Heseltine (arguably the quintessential dog for that purpose), or because they get an adrenalin rush from a crisis and - as Kenneth Clarke did directly post-election - exude a zestful fat cattery in defeat.
Because I tend to follow election results on television, I almost missed the triumphalist flavour of the voter response to the results as delivered by radio programmes.
Tuning to Five Live, I found Lady Olga Maitland representing the Conservatives on a phone-in programme during which the bulk of the callers adopted a tone of "Ha, gotcha". The underlying message seemed to be: we told you and you wouldn't listen and now look at where you've got yourselves and we're not one bit sorry, so we're not.
THE problem about any election result is that retrospective interpretation makes clear what may not have been clear in the years and months before the election.
Take the issue of Europe: the Conservatives were deeply split on it. One view was that they needed to move along in tandem with Europe. The other, most notably articulated by the 1922 Committee, was that membership of the EU was questionable at best and any possibility of closer links should be fought.
I suspect John Major belonged by instinct to the first group but felt that to remain popular he had to move closer to the second. Yet not only did the Eurosceptics not do well but, for the most part, lost their seats. Xenophobia may not have the pull on a more cosmopolitan Britain that it once had.
Not only is Britain more cosmopolitan, but it's also more open to women. The doubling of the numbers of women MPs means that the physical infrastructure will have to be changed - for the first time tangibly acknowledging the sizeable, and I would hope irreversible, presence and power of women in parliament.
This would be a wonderful result should a similar doubling of women representatives happen here in our general election.
Tactical voting played a major part in the result. The Liberal Democrats more than doubled its number of MPs while its share of the vote actually fell marginally. As an individual object lesson, the defeat of Neil Hamilton (and wife) by Martin Bell deserves its place in history in showing how allies can manage a system to defeat an enemy.
It would be unthinkable in Ireland for a major political party to refrain from fielding a candidate in a constituency even when it is clear that the candidate will be defeated. Although each party has its own expert on strategic vote management, this expertise is grossly underutilised.
One reason for this is the reluctance potential allies have when it comes to sharing secrets. Another is the fact that a party like Fianna Fail could, in some constituencies, come much closer to the prize through vote management yet can neither discipline its own candidates to stick by a strategic plan nor explain to its voters how best to use the system.
Take a well-known Dublin constituency where Fianna Fail has only one seat in five. The Fianna Fail candidate tends to win this seat with a massive surplus. If party strategists could implement a rigorous vote-management policy it is likely that a second seat could be won. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have offered a lesson it would be a pity to miss.
Incidentally, Martin Bell's acceptance speech - he undertook to serve no party whip and serve for one term only - offered another lesson.
I'M very sad to see John Major blamed for a trend already well under way before Margaret Thatcher was ever ousted.
There are cycles of certainty in politics which always end (a dictatorship apart) and the cycle of Thatcherite certainty was dying well before her departure from office. Major was just the unfortunate heir.
He was like a man put in charge of the telegram department of a communications company three years after fax machines go on the market. The medium is so redundant that the message is less important: my own belief is that although the sexual sleaze factor amounted to little more than entertainment and titillation, the payments for asking parliamentary questions sleaze factor contributed to voter disaffection because it reflected a tawdry tiredness within the Tories.
The size of the Blair majority means yesterday may be his last happy day until he goes out of power. A gross majority is a double-edged sword. Following the 1977 general election landslide which swept the coalition government out of power here and lost three leading ministers, Patrick Cooney, Justin Keating and Conor Cruise O'Brien, their seats,
Jack Lynch, ever understated in victory, said that he saw a 20-seat majority as a potential liability., There are many who would agree with him.
Whatever one feels about his tactics, Tony Blair has to be congratulated on delivering a fantastic result. Oddly, one of his most significant victories, the support of so many newspapers, may prove to be his largest early obstacle. Having switched allegiances, these papers will be impatient for him to deliver in government. Labour is unlikely to be allowed the kind of lengthy political honeymoon a party returning to power after 18 years might expect.
Blair redefined Labour for this election. He had better make sure it stays redefined.