Peter Rhodes on no smiles from Jeremy, no problems for Boris and no statue for Nigel

The General Election, bringing its massive Tory majority, was the work of one man. Nigel Farage has done more to change our nation than any person in the past 20 years. Yet I doubt if we’ll ever see a statue raised in his honour.

Farage is already moving on from the Brexit Party with the announcement that he is founding the Reform Party dedicated to a better electoral system and scrapping the House of Lords. Now you’re talking. Let us start by chucking out the bishops, rabbis, imams and other religious leaders from the Lords. This is the 21st century, not the 15th and the idea, in an agnostic society, of reserving seats in Parliament for people of faith is as offensive as inheriting them.

We certainly do not need 800 Lords and Ladies. They may all claim to be working really hard but the Lords is a classic example of work expanding to fit the numbers available. If Britain needs any sort of second chamber, let us limit it to 100 peers. I guarantee none of them would die of overwork.

The day before the election, I watched Boris’s spoof version of the Love, Actually scene, standing outside his sweetheart’s door and communicating silently by showing her a series of placards. It was cheap and cheesy but when one placard showed a tousle-haired little puppy, you had to smile. A friend in her 30s was watching the YouTube video with me. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “He’s nailed it, hasn’t he?” As it turned out, he had.

So when the experts come to analyse this election, I hope somebody counts the number of smiles. Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign seemed to be founded almost entirely on misery. Boris Johnson smiled and laughed, just as Tony Blair did before his 1997 landslide. Johnson and Blair fought on a positive message; things could only get better. But Corbyn, from start to finish, looked like a whippet chewing a wasp. And while it’s fine for a politician to scowl when he’s denouncing assorted crises in housing, education, social care and the NHS, where was the smile, where was the promise of jolly days in the sunlit uplands of Jeremyland when all our problems were solved? There was none.

By the end of the campaign, you had the idea that Corbynism equalled misery and that as each misery was overcome, another would surely take its place. The Corbynista revolution, glum, grey and bitter, would go on for ever. Not good enough. People want hope and Corbyn offered them none. If you want a dirge for his political death, try the tune from The Wizard of Oz: Ding, Dong, the Glum Old Trot Has Gone.

If it’s any consolation to Mr Corbyn, two or three years from now Boris Johnson, today the toast of his party, will probably be the most hated man in Britain. I can’t explain why. It just happens. It goes with the job.