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PS And on this, admittedly rare, occasion I was not even trying to make a party political point by referring to the election result. I just wanted to give an example of an occasion when polls, and all of them, got the result spectacularly wrong. I am, of course, excluding the exit poll which got the result spectacularly right. But that was not a poll in the sense I have in mind, that is a before-the -event prediction, rather a parallel, contemporaneous survey. However, the various PMs that are going on in Labour, LibDem and UKIP, together with the associated bloodletting, would appear to suggest that the 'higher echelons' knew for some time what the result would be.

Pity about Jim Murphy, I rather liked him, his carefully chosen words and softly spoken manner. I thought he was a real thinker, but I guess that is what happens to real Labour thinkers. And I did not say all of this because I am in Glasgow this week-end watching my son play his NFL!