"The cause of the Labour downfall is simple enough. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, proves to be a hard-line Leftist..."

"... believing that the state should control the individual and the individual should have no control over the state. Resenting capitalism, he wants to control markets and punish through taxation everyone who has benefitted from markets. He reminds me of Mikhael Gorbachev whose policy of perestroika was supposed to have the edge over reality. One look at him has been enough for the people of England. The Scottish National Party has captured an almost clean sweep of the Scottish seats, thus smashing beyond repair the previous Labour monopoly of those seats. A twenty-year-old student, in one startling instance, has trounced a former experienced cabinet minister. Culturally distinct from the English, the people of Scotland are wandering away into another imaginary landscape of socialism and nationalism. Now where have we had examples of this combination, and has any good ever come of it?"

Writes David Pryce-Jones in "Westminster Election Diary" at The New Criterion.