Getting the Brexit election done.

Argh!

Too much?

No?

I'm losing my voice.

Right, so Robert, you've got a festive frog in your throat.

So I'm going to let you offload the talking.

And you can have light felt pen duties today

because you're unwell.

But anyway, here we are, results day.

And a new blue dawn has broken, has it not?

It has.

Tories have got a majority of 80.

It's a bigger win than I think either of us expected.

I think, as we showed at the end of the last talk,

we both sort of thought the Tories were going to make it.

But I certainly didn't think you were

going to be anything like as big as that.

No.

So how did we get here?

Have we got any prediction?

We have.

In fact, I happen to know that people refer

to this backdrop as the shed.

So I'm going to root around in the shed, where

I have some of our old artwork.

People have also criticised us for using paper,

saying we should be recycling.

So I hope they notice that we are recycling...

Reusing.

...our drawings.

So essentially, everything the Tories tried to do worked.

And everything the other sides tried to do to stop them

failed.

It's really quite as simple as that.

So the Tories managed to break through this so-called red wall

of Labour heartland seats, not just right across the north

of England but into Wales, where large chunks of Wales are now

Tory.

It's true that the Labour party hung on in a lot of London,

which stays red, and in other urban seats.

But the Tories also held on in the south of England

against the Lib Dems.

The Tories' biggest losses were in Scotland, where they

lost seven of their 13 seats.

Other than that, I think they lost about four seats

in the rest of the country.

The Liberals took Richmond Park in London.

But a lot of their big targets they didn't make.

And they didn't unseat.

No seats off them.

No.

And the Lib Dems didn't manage their scalp

of the night, which was supposed to be the foreign secretary

Dominic Raab in Esher.

But instead of Dominic Raab being the Portillo moment,

the Portillo moment was Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem

leader in Dunbartonshire, decapitated by the SNP.

Very sad end.

And Nicola Sturgeon barely able to contain her joy.

Did you see the video there?

It's been a tough fight between the Lib Dems

and the SNP in that seat for the last three elections.

It's been an awful election for the Liberal Democrats

and for poor old Jo Swinson in particular.

Right.

Let's draw a results map then.

Look, I'm going to do one of my absolutely

wonderful geographical messes.

Maybe a bit simpler than last time.

Here we go.

And here's Northern Ireland.

That's the Isle of Wight.

How's that?

Is that Okay?

That looks like something I put on my dresser, I think.

Okay, Okay, so the SNP is just so

dominant north of the border, no.

And actually, that's really interesting,

because even though the Tories did way better than

we were all expecting in England and Wales.

Actually, we'd begun to expect that the Tories would hold

onto some seats in Scotland.

But the SNP really did very well indeed.

They basically chased the Labour party out of Scotland.

They played the grievances of Scottish voters

at being forced into a Brexit they didn't vote for.

And it has paid off for them in, and it has paid off for them

in this election.

On top of which, Nicola Sturgeon was easily

the most effective political performer

on television in the debates.

This has obviously raised-...

what's going on down there?

I don't know.

I'm just adding the south-west.

Carry on, carry on.

This has obviously raised questions

about a second Scottish independence

referendum and a new push.

And the SNP certainly are very emboldened.

And this will be something that's weighing heavily

on Boris Johnson's mind.

But you think that this unexpected majority of 80

actually means the story, as it continues from this point,

could be much more interesting on Brexit and on the union,

right?

Because if Boris Johnson had had a much slimmer majority

we may have got out of the parliamentary deadlock

of the hung parliament.

But he, the prime minister, would still have not properly

been in control and possibly would

have been still under the influence of the European

Research Group, the arch-Brexiteers

in his own party.

The Brexit deadline coming up.

He had said he would get the whole trade deal negotiated

by the end of 2020.

But actually now that he's so powerful

and has had such a convincing win,

he's got way more room to do more interesting things

and to be more flexible, right?

And not only has he got a big majority,

but the opposition is shattered.

The Labour party is down to just over 200 seats.

It's going to be fighting itself for the next six months.

The Liberal Democrats hammered.

Only the SNP are cohesive.

So not only has he got a big majority,

but he's got it at the time when the opposition is very weak.

Brexit is now going to happen.

Correct.

By the end of January, the UK will

have left the European Union.

So that uncertainty is gone.

So that's happening, he has more room for manoeuvre and also

just more authority.

He's just won a big election.

So that's the biggest Conservative victory

since Margaret Thatcher in 1987.

So he's got all that authority.

We don't know the extent to which he

wants to decouple from the ERG.

We know some of his advisers have contempt for them.

But we're not sure.

But I think the point that you're making and which I agree

with, is that...

what?

No, it's fine.

Do agree with the point you think

I'm making, because it's not the one I'm making.

You actually said it.

And I was going agree with you.

This is most unfair.

Because of the threat of Scotland,

because of the new seats that he has won,

it might change his approach to the Brexit discussions.

He's now got to conduct the next stage of talks,

the trade talks with a mind to not doing anything that pushes

Scotland further away and keeping happy

these new seats that they have won,

the so-called red wall, the manufacturing

heartlands, as were at least, in the north and in the Midlands.

All these seats...

There are still Labour seats there.

Yes, of course there are.

But I mean, it is quite striking how much blue

there is there now.

Those seats have different priorities

to the wealthy south.

Quite.

And they've got MPs who are going

to have to be mindful of those things

if they want to keep their seats this next election,

because as Boris Johnson said, they've been lent these votes.

They haven't got them in the bag yet for keeps.

So it's manufacturing areas, areas where the export

industries are important.

So for that, you need close trading relationships.

So that means you're going to have

to go for a softer Brexit, maybe a very soft Brexit.

We might be getting our hopes up.

I think if he sticks to his deadline,

it's only him forcing this deadline of 2020 on himself,

the only type of trade you can get

is a very thin one, basically tariffs and quotas.

The big sticking point is the issue of regulatory alignment.

That's the thing that makes frictionless trade possible.

That's going to be what a lot of these places want to see.

Having talked up the benefits of freedom

from regulatory alignment, he's going

to have to think about if he really wants that.

He's going to have to think about how

he prioritises a European trade deal ahead of a US trade deal.

US trade deal is the big political prize of Brexit.

Economically, it's worth nothing like as much.

It's not even comparable to a European deal.

Let's talk a bit about Northern Ireland, because the DUP,

the Democratic Unionists, who had been in coalition

with Theresa May, had then been key allies

until Boris Johnson put together his oven-ready exit deal.

But actually, in the election, the DUP

has done really badly in Northern Ireland.

So they're sort of disempowered as the voice

of Northern Ireland.

It's gone from sort of orange to green.

But of course, in Boris Johnson's current withdrawal

agreement there is the erection of a border in the Irish Sea.

What happens with that?

That's still going to cause some problems, isn't it?

My deeply cynical view of this is that Boris Johnson really

just doesn't care very much about Northern Ireland.

You know, he worked... it was hard when he was trying

to become leader.

And although he would not seek the reunification of Ireland,

I don't think he would think of it in the way he thinks

about the loss of Scotland.

Oh, my goodness.

And the unionist MPs, as you were

saying, for the first time, they're

in a minority of elected MPs from the province.

That's an extraordinary thing.

It has to be possible that a border poll is

coming in the next decade.

A border poll being a referendum on which

the whole island of Ireland votes

as to whether to become the republic or not the UK.

It's in play.

And these border checks, I don't think they necessarily

force Northern Ireland into the hands of the Republic,

because it's actually got quite a preferential deal

in this Brexit deal.

But it does mean that Northern Ireland has

to look towards the European Union

as much as it looks towards the UK for its economic policy

and future.

So it's kind of basically two huge existential

topics continuing to be in play, the future of the UK

as a union, and also Brexit and the relationship

with our closest allies and former fellow member states.

But of course, the reason that the Tory party

has won this stonking majority is

by saying, we'll just get Brexit out of the way,

because there's a whole other agenda.

Let's just talk a bit about what happened to Labour.

This is the worst set of results for Labour in terms of seats

in the Commons since 1935.

It's catastrophic.

Think that actually, after a few years

in which unanswerable laws of politics

seem to have been suspended.

I think actually what happened here is they returned.