The Tories have been diminished by this election

There’s an expression used in football to describe an approach to the game that discounts the virtues of elegance, style, beauty, originality and daring, and — concentrates on blocking, frustrating and grinding down. It’s called ‘winning ugly’. While degrading the game, it often works.

But having won a match, a football team does not have to govern the country for five years. It does not need our love, our patience or our intellectual respect. The Conservative party attempted to win the general election by winning ugly, and in doing so, they have lost some of our love and our respect. That, I reflect, is what, without direction from the top, ‘professional’ modern campaigning risks achieving.

Could the Tories have had a more self-destructive campaign if they had simply blocked their ears to advice from the high priests of polling and political communications? It’s hard to think how.

Who would have thought that after a general election called in the confident hope of cementing a government’s and a party leader’s authority, we should end it with May losing her majority? At Westminster Theresa May’s colleagues, new and old, will now have seen her openly mocked by allies as well as enemies, her name jeered at by audiences who (contrary to CCHQ’s complaints) were picked for balance, but themselves caught the national mood of irritation with the Conservative campaign.

Like virginity, a reputation for acuity, if it takes a tumble, has gone. The parliamentary Conservative party is a merciless beast, and from now on she is on probation. Professional communications have had an important hand in achieving this sad fall.

I have nothing against systematic data-gathering or the conscious framing of a campaign or its messages if these things are intelligently done. My complaint against the communications industry, however, is that so often it isn’t any good at communicating.