WE’VE all got used to lies, insults and shocks in recent national votes, both here and in the US.

And it very much looked as if this 2017 General Election would follow suit. 

The whole election – costing some £140 million in wasted public funds - was based upon the big lie that Mrs May needed to strengthen her hand in Brexit negotiations, when we all knew that it was nothing more than an opportunistic Tory ploy to decimate Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party while the opinion polls clearly indicated so. 

Even EU leaders said the result would have no effect on negotiations.

The fun thing for me was to sit-up all night on Thursday and witness May and her Tory pals facial expressions turn from their usual arrogance to despair, as the exit poll’s total surprise of a hung parliament gradually came true. 

I was so pleased my old CND and Stop War friend, Jeremy Corbyn, was triumphant rather than humiliated after the intense media smear campaign and repetitive Tory personal insults put upon this quiet sincere man who tends an allotment and makes jam.

He didn’t deserve any of it, and May has learned to her cost that you can’t run a campaign based on virtually nothing more than a choice between her saintly self and a demonised Corbyn. 

I’m so glad that Jeremy and Labour’s costed, transformational manifesto – unlike Milliband’s and Blair’s before - for once showed the big socialist alternative to further Tory decimation of our public services.

I’m not sure where things go now with May cuddling up to the far-right DUP to continue in government, rather than resigning, but the shadowy super-rich who work behind Tory scenes are bound to demand her head in the next couple of weeks or months. 

Of Labour, at least Owen Smith has admitted be was wrong about Jeremy and I hope many others do the same, especially Blair and Campbell.

From the Green Party’s viewpoint, surely now is Labour’s time to ditch nuclear power and bombs, go for PR voting and written constitution, while stopping millionaire election funding and unelected Lords?

It’s ironic how the other big Tory lie - for Scotland to avoid an austerity debate - that the election was 100 per cent about the SNP’s calling another independence referendum, did actually win 12 seats and a surprise last straw for another short-term May government.

ALAN DEBENHAM
Taunton