We lost to the Lib Dems in my ward. A great shame; Rosie was a terrific councillor. I was on polling station duty again, as a ‘teller’ – sitting in the sun for six hours, asking the voters for their numbers so that we could cross them off. Only a few refused to divulge them, as they’re entitled to, of course; probably under the illusion that we could use them to find out how they voted. Most of them were big men with tattoos and scowly faces and meek little women following them, also declining to divulge their numbers, but apologetically. I put them down on my little pad as ‘UKIP’. So if their motive was secrecy, it didn’t work.

Then back to follow the coverage on TV in bed. It was pretty dispiriting: all the emphasis on what it meant for the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, whom the commentators (especially one awful woman) clearly felt very superior to. Dozed off, I’m afraid. Waking up in the morning I found that the results for Labour in England and Wales were nothing like as bad as had been predicted; but that just meant the commentators shifted their focus to Scotland, where Labour, of course, had never stood a chance against the Nats. I’m still waiting for the London Mayoral result. And the votes for ‘Elected Police Commissioners’, though that (fairly new) position is not really taken seriously. I spoiled my paper for that.

It seems to me that after all this, things remain very much as they were. Nothing has changed, or been ‘proved’. Everybody thinks the crucial vote will be the EU Referendum on June 23^rd. That’s not a party question – far from it – so they won’t be needing ‘tellers’. Once that’s out of the way, we can get back to the issues that should have dominated yesterday’s elections. And make the Tories pay.