The June 2017 general election shocked the United Kingdom. It began with talk of a Tory landslide and ended with a hung Parliament. Theresa May began the campaign with the popularity of a pop idol and ended it with the credibility of a confidence trickster.

Jeremy Corbyn led a surge in support for Labour not equalled since the days of Clement Atlee. Tony Blair’s landslide win in 1997 was the only time in recent memory that Labour achieved more than the 40 percent national share of the vote it has just received under Corbyn. He might not have won the election, but May certainly lost it, and the Labour left is closer to power than at any other time in its history.

And the Conservatives, the Scottish nationalists, and all the other parties who failed to meet expectations are not the only losers from the last seven weeks of campaigning. Corbyn’s opponents among the ranks of his own parliamentary party, many of whom were widely reported to be preparing a fresh leadership challenge had the result been a little worse, wore the same fixed smiles and glazed looks of men and women whose dreams had temporarily been shattered, even if they walked away from the affair with their jobs intact.