Has there ever been such a bloodbath? Among the leaders, Miliband, Clegg, Farage all gone. Among the MPs, Balls, Galloway, Murphy, both Alexanders, Cable. Truly, a bonfire of some major-league politicians – and, as the mordant Marina Hyde tweeted, “a great night for the Strictly Come Dancing bookers”.

It was also a night (and morning) of mostly gracious parting speeches. If I was shadow foreign secretary, I could not have managed the equanimity of Douglas Alexander when beaten by 20-year-old politics student Mhairi Black. I would have burst into tears and suggested she should be back in her bedsit revising.

Alexander, by contrast, thanked his victorious opponent, congratulated her on her “formidable campaign” and wished her well – she herself had the good grace to look embarrassed to be bringing a 47-year-old’s frontline political career to an end; he thanked his wife and children; said what a privilege it had been to serve the people of Renfrewshire (the turncoat bastards!), and managed a few words about his party’s “difficult” night. The first of the heavyweights to be defeated, Alexander set the tone.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy congratulates the new MP for East Renfrewshire, the SNP’s Kirsten Oswald. Photograph: Graham Stuart/Reuters

Jim Murphy’s speech was even better, because he said all the expected thank-yous but was also moving and profound. “No one should ever confuse nationalism for their nation, no one should mistake your party for your country, because our nation, our streets, our flag won’t ever belong to one particular party or one particular cause.” His brief speech was full of good lines, especially “the party that has traditionally been the tireless champion of the underdog now finds itself in the position of being the underdog”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ed Balls loses his seat – video

Ed Balls, who 12 hours earlier must have been anticipating being chancellor, was the antithesis of his bruising persona, and said all the right things, putting his “sense of sorrow” at his party’s performance and concerns about the future ahead of his personal disappointment. He stuck his chin out and got through what must have been a terrible ordeal. A career in ruins. Yes, lucrative City jobs await, but they will be humdrum compared with the might-have-beens.

Vince Cable, who had been defending a huge majority in Twickenham and surely can’t have expected to lose, couldn’t quite manage Balls’s chin-out stoicism. He looked shell-shocked and said his party were hit by a “very well-organised national campaign based on people’s fear of a Labour government and the Scottish nationalists”, adding, threateningly, “we’ll see in the days that follow what are the implications of that”. Here, though he sought to find the right words, was a hint of the bitterness that underpinned the honeyed words.

George Galloway of course is not noted for honeyed words, and some have criticised his speech as graceless. But I didn’t think it was particularly. He congratulated his Labour opponent in Bradford West on her “remarkable victory”, and seemed genuinely sorrowful that the Labour movement of which he saw himself as a part had suffered defeat nationally. There was some trademark rhetoric – “There will be others who are already celebrating – the venal, the vile, the racists and the Zionists will all be celebrating” – but his pay-off was splendid in its impassioned meaninglessness. “The hyena can dance on the lion’s grave, but it can never be a lion.” A useful lion – sorry, line – for any future defeated candidate. With the victorious Alex Salmond also invoking the kings of the jungle, it had been a good night for lions, though a terrible one for fedora-wearing politicians.

Danny Alexander, joint architect of the Lib Dem disaster, did his best to say goodbye to his career with honour, but his heart wasn’t really in it. He barely raised his eyes from his notes; his face was puffy; he looked utterly defeated – spiritually as well as numerically. This was how not to resign: with a dull whimper. There is grace and there is just going through the motions, and this Alexander was going through the motions. The hyenas had done for him.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ed Miliband resigns as leader of the Labour party – video

Among the leaders, Ed Miliband made a terrific speech – better than anything he managed during the campaign. He looked relaxed and in complete control, and was given a rousing reception by party workers. He even summoned up a few jokes. “Thank you for the selfies, thank you for the support, and thank you for the most unlikely cult of the 21st century, Milifandom.” A truly admirable departure. The bookies had him in No 10 today. Instead, he is in the political dustbin. Yet he invited us to have one last laugh at his plight. Heroic.

Nick Clegg was less controlled, gulping a glass of water to steady voice and nerves as he delivered his text. The results, he said, were “crushing and unkind”; the defeat “catastrophic”. There were no jokes in this speech, and no hollering – at least not until the very end – by young party workers either. To be reduced to eight seats was a generational collapse, perhaps even an existential challenge. He described the defeat as “heart-breaking” and his heart was clearly broken. It was cruel of Conservatives in Sheffield Hallam to keep him in the Commons, where he will now be a figure of fun – and of tragedy. He claimed he had furthered the cause of liberalism, but he may have killed it.

Nigel Farage’s resignation speech was, inevitably, the oddest of the three by the departing leaders. Delivered on the edge of a cliff – was he contemplating throwing himself off it? – surrounded by fellow Rotarians, he resigned while saying he might stand again for the post in the autumn. He has form in this regard, having taken a sabbatical from the leadership before. He had a dig at the media, who he said thought that party leaders always broke their word; took a pop at some of his party candidates for saying unhelpful things during the election; and said he was taking the summer off but would be back. Neither lion nor hyena, but a peculiar native English species of kangaroo.

In some ways, making a winning speech is harder than making a losing one. How difficult it is not to indulge in Thatcher-style triumphalism. But David Cameron, having got it so wrong in the wake of the Scottish referendum with his talk of English votes for English laws, struck just the right tone this time in an inclusive victory speech outside 10 Downing Street.

“Elections can be bruising clashes of ideas and arguments, and a lot of people who believe profoundly in public service have seen that service cut short,” he said. In particular he was thinking of Miliband and Clegg, young men for whom this has proved the greasiest of polls. They will have good jobs and happy families and material comforts, but they now have circumscribed political futures and will always be branded as losers.

“Ed Miliband rang me this morning to wish me luck with the new government,” said Cameron. “It was a typically generous gesture from someone who is clearly in public service for all the right reasons.” No more Flashman – at least not until the going gets tough again in the autumn and he is up against a new, fresh-faced, boundlessly optimistic Labour leader. Cameron also thanked Nick Clegg for his help in making a success of “the first coalition government in 70 years”. Well could he afford to be gracious to Clegg. His “big, open and comprehensive offer” to the Lib Dem leader had been a masterstroke, getting him through five difficult years and destroying the Liberal Democrats into the bargain.

It is fashionable to decry politicians as venal, self-interested, ineffectual, but on election night – as the smoke on the battlefield clears – we see them at their best. Most of us went to bed last night knowing we would have the same job and the same life the next morning. Politicians don’t have that comfort. Their nearest equivalent is sports people, for whom every game is win or lose, make or break, life or death. Many were broken last night, and mostly they responded with courage and dignity. Not lions in the political jungle, but not hyenas either. Just people, finding something in themselves that allowed them to rise above the bitterness of seeing everything they had spent their life working for extinguished.