Now the waverers know the price of opting for the ‘devil they know’

SOMETIMES, secretly, politicians hate the electorate. Well, maybe that’s a bit harsh. The politician who works his back off for the people of his constituency, and then loses his seat, usually goes through a couple of years of bemusement, and frequently bitterness.

Some of them never get over it.

But they do frequently come to realise, if and when the bitterness dies down, that they may have got the result they deserved. Maybe they worked too hard at the wrong stuff, or in ways that were invisible to the people they thought they were representing. Maybe they lost touch with the real concerns of their people, or lived too long on their laurels.