Labour put 'safe' seats at risk to target marginals. It paid off – but there’s a cost | Robert Ford

The party's landslide victory on only 34% of the vote was a masterpiece of electoral Jenga. But the taller the tower, the weaker the base

The asteroid hit at dawn. The seats of four Tory former prime ministers - Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - fell in an hour at around 6am on Friday, capping a historically unprecedented collapse for the Conservative party. The defeat of Truss provided this election's biggest Portillo moment", as the political career of the country's shortest-serving PM ended with her defeat by the largest swing to Labour ever recorded.

The loss of those four seats epitomised the message sent by voters - an emphatic rejection of the party these PMs had led over the past 14 years. The 2024 election saw the Conservatives fall to their lowest ever vote share and lose 252 seats - more than any government has ever lost before. In seat after seat, across every region of the UK, Tory MPs were swept away. An even greater catastrophe was only narrowly averted - more than half of the remaining 121 Conservative MPs clung on with majorities of 8% or less.