A number of lessons can be learnt from the most interesting election result for many years. Perhaps the clearest is that the case for proportional representation can finally be seen to be wholly without merit.

Charles Kennedy argued during the campaign that the election was a referendum on the war. So let us take it as just that. The Lib Dems — the only democratic party that would have preferred Saddam to have remained in power than for him to have been removed by force — managed to secure the support of just over one in five of those who voted (22 per cent). The pro-war parties, on the other hand, were supported by 67.5 per cent of voters.

The people have spoken — nay, shouted — their views, Mr Kennedy. And their message is, on your own argument, that the anti-war party should take a running jump. Yet Mr Kennedy and his fellow PR supporters now have the gall to claim that the result of the election demonstrates the need for PR, because Labour has achieved a parliamentary majority without a majority of the votes cast — a leap of logic so breathtaking as to be self-evidently nonsensical.

Given the low levels of support accorded to the two grown-up parties (35.2 per cent to Labour and 32.3 per cent to the Conservatives), demonstrably there was no enthusiasm for either. There is, however, nothing in these figures to show that a party without a majority of the popular vote is not entitled to a majority of the seats in the House of Commons. That is certainly a case which can be made, although to make it necessitates believing that we have not had a legitimate government since 1935, when the Tories achieved 55 per cent of the vote.

Not only was Attlee thus an illegitimate prime minister; so too the Liberal landslide of 1906 should have been nothing of the sort, since Campbell-Bannerman’s party achieved just 48.9 per cent.

Just as the figures show that there was little enthusiasm for either mainstream party, so they make clear that there is even less enthusiasm for Mr Kennedy’s fringe party. And thus that there is, at most, just 22 per cent support for handing over in perpetuity the determination of the government of the country to the Lib Dems, which would be the outcome of PR. Even in the Alice in Wonderland world of the Lib Dems, 22 per cent of a vote surely does not equate to a majority.