GENERAL ELECTION 2024 LIVE: Follow MailOnline's liveblog for latest updatesWere you up for John Nicolson? It was 4.23am when the news came in that the grandest of all SNP MPs had lost his seat.
The evening began with the exit poll showing the Nationalists reduced to ten seats. Party strategists had set twenty as their benchmark for a respectable result. This wasn't a bloody nose; it was an absolute skelping. Some Unionists considered it poor judgement on ITV's part to hire Sturgeon as an election analyst. I totally agree.
Prompted by Bradby on the SNP's apparent losses, he observed that 'the architect' of the strategy to make the election a de facto referendum on independence was 'right there in the studio with you', suggesting pointedly that she might wish to offer 'some mea culpas'.'I think Peter's getting a wee bit over-excited there,' she sneered, before adding that his analysis was 'not unexpected'.
Oh, and her much-awaited analysis of her party's meltdown? It wasn't her constitution-centric strategy but the failure to link independence to 'people's day-to-day lives'.I flipped over to BBC One around 12.30am, where the inevitable Kirsty Wark was hosting Scottish Government minister Shirley-Anne Somerville, Tory MSP Liz Smith, Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie, and former Lib Dem chief Jo Swinson.
She looked like someone who had turned up for her first day in a new job and the job was head of safety at Chernobyl.Citing Partygate and Liz Truss's premiership as the two events which inflicted the most damage, she admitted: 'I was personally sitting with my head in my hands.' Jim Murphy — remember him? — was suddenly on the BBC panel, sporting a white checked blazer over black crew neck and a pair of unmissable horn-rimmed glasses, looking like he'd run away from The Proclaimers to become a software engineer.
As the new prime minister vowed 'an end to the politics of performance', there stood next to him a man dressed as Elmo from Sesame Street , applauding the sentiment. We shot up to Aberdeen South, where a sombre-looking Stephen Flynn clung on, telling the count: 'When you're knocked down, you get back up again.'