We may have found a use for Ed Miliband. We’re going to put him in for the Turner. He’s art. He’s an installation. Not lifelike of course, not comprehensible, very expensive and widely agreed to be useless.

Art!

This afternoon he looked like the conductor of a hyper-nationalist Last Night of the Proms. The Tories were the orchestra. He pointed his finger at the horn section. They blared patriotic fervour. He jabbed at the strings, they hit the high notes. He waved his arms at them all, “More! More!” he screamed, and they rose en masse to his level. “Wilder!” he cried. “More passion, more fury!” Oh, how they responded, louder still and louder.

The prime minister had been humiliated, isolated, routed, he said. Tory spirits soared. The prime minister was incompetent, absurd, toxic. Tory cheers lifted the roofbeams. He had failed, he was in tatters, he’d been outwitted, outmanoeuvred and outvoted.

The Conservative party felt themselves heading towards the fourth or fifth of their seven heavens.

One after another they rose to congratulate, thank, encourage the Prime Minister: Howarth, Redwood, Cash, Lilley, Edward LEIGH!

Five points up in the polls. A party united as never before. Cameron’s lordly ease and gentlemanliness has returned.

And the opposition is led by Tracey Emin’s unmade bed.

After very many years, it’s time to be a Tory.