Victory over two Eds better than one

David Cameron went to Buckingham Palace at lunchtime to tell the Queen he had won a majority and not to worry her royal head about any constitutional complexities. His journey was slightly complicated because Whitehall had been cordoned off for the VE day commemoration. Victory over Ed day.

In fact, it was Victory over two Eds day: victory over both Miliband and Balls, two Eds being better than one. And it gets better. Clegg! Cable! Farage! All beaten or fallen on their sword or both. It was like an angry 12-year-old's private fantasy being enacted in real life. Everyone who had ever dissed or irritated him suddenly found themselves being vaporised. I am Superdave! No one crosses me! No one!

And just as on the original VE day it was snowing history. We have waited five years for a party leader to resign, and then two go within half an hour. Some of us managed a very rare double by walking briskly from one end of St James's Park to the other and catching them both.

I felt like a CEO rushing from office to office conducting mass sackings: "No need to go back to your office. Your personal items will be sent on. Security will see you out. Let's not make this unpleasant, shall we?" And neither of them did, thank heaven, or we all might have choked up.

Nick Clegg, it is fair to say, was not his normal self. A tear never seemed far away. The text was elegiac but the delivery had none of his normal impromptu manner; indeed it almost sounded as though he was reading the text for the first time.

It was, he said, a "catastrophic" result. His word. But, he added: "The cruellest irony is that British liberalism and its fine noble tradition are needed more today than ever before." No moderate politician has been so immoderately reviled. No nicer politician has been so hated. "He is the only politician I've ever worked with who never got into a temper," one senior civil servant told me. And his party has been beaten to a pulp for consorting with Tories by voters many of whom proceeded to vote Tory themselves. Not merely was this election hard to predict, it was hard to analyse retrospectively.

Ed Miliband's fate was sealed only later in the night. He could certainly have withstood a relatively narrow defeat. He didn't get one and by dawn it was clear he too would have to do the necessary. There was an apology of a kind: "I am truly sorry we did not succeed. I have done my best for nearly five years." His achievement? "I hope I brought to this party the ability to have disagreements without being disagreeable."

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One man whose fate has been discussed endlessly in the past is now definitely not resigning. The prime minister returned to Downing Street looking pinker-cheeked than ever. Samantha Cameron honoured the palace with an extraordinary outfit: a midnight-blue dress with a hi-vis yellow back, un hommage to her husband's favourite election gear.

He did make a speech that said something about being nice to the Scots and having an EU referendum. He was not the dozy Dave of the early part of the campaign nor the dynamic Dave of the run-in. And not at all the dastardly Dave who schemed for victory so cynically and so successfully.

Instead he was statesmanlike, generous to the vanquished, a proper leader. But to be honest my mind was starting to wander. We tricoteuses have no interest in all this coronation stuff; we much prefer the scent of blood.

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