When I was a boy I used to enjoy elections. There was something about the numbers and the constituency names that romanced me. The punditry, however, was often pointless. “No government two years into its term of office has ever done so well/badly as this, and if this trend continues then we would expect to see . . .” and so on. Just because something happened last time, I reasoned, doesn’t mean it has to happen next time. And if I tended to be wrong about that back then, I’m sure as hell right about it now, in these volatile times.

So when a TV programme made the mistake of asking what I thought the significance of the local election results might be, I replied: