Which is the more impressive – and enjoyable?

The scale of the UK Labour Party’s electoral calamity?

Or the fact that it has been prolonged by the extended counting in London, giving the commentariat so much scope to twist the knife?

Those who like crackling vivid English have plenty to read this morning.

PM Gordon Brown in Narnia:

Part of the magic of political leadership is an ability to change the weather. Poor Mr Brown is the opposite, like Narnia under the rule of the White Witch, where it is always winter and never Christmas.

Red Ken’s (or his dentist’s?) perfect storm:

The immediate judgment will be that Livingstone was hit by a perfect storm. And so he was … Maybe the storm hit him because he sailed towards it.

And Labour’s full moon:

These elections were not an invitation to change. They were a big two-fingered salute, a raspberry, a pressing of the de-trousered national buttocks to the window of the polling station.

I have never met Ken Livingstone. But I do remember his contribution during the attempt to topple Yeltsin back in 1993.

Livingstone wrote an article in (I think) the Guardian gushing praise on the anti-Yeltsin protesters then gathered outside the Russian Parliament’s ‘White House’, saying that they were the true noble democrats rising up against Yeltsin’s vicious capitalism blah blah.

An Embassy group including myself went to talk to these demonstrators. They were aimiable enough, but they represented a classic Red/Brown fascist socialist tendency: communists, racists, religious nutcases, anti-semites, pro-Russia xenophobes and the like.

Had they prevailed, Russia would have slumped to disaster. Luckily for all of us, they did not (although the BBC seemed to want them to).

This rubbish was a measure of Ken Livingstone’s judgement and insight. Later as London’s Mayor his lumpen-left populism (all the more revolting for being so keenly, smugly calculated) extended to sucking up to Chavez and trying to get cheap oil, while also wooing radical Islamists and making childish(?) anti-semitic remarks.

So good riddance to him.

My question for the Conservatives. Nice win – but what exactly are you going to do with all this new-found power and influence?

In particular, will Conservative councils set an example and clean up the rubbish lying around this country?