David Greensmith’s analysis is fine as far as it goes but there some additional factors.

1) Mrs May called the election against the advice of Sir Lynton Crosby who warned her and Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill that the 20 point poll lead was “soft” and was in reality just 10%

2) The timing was wrong, calling the election should have been done when students were on holidays and gap years.

Instead it was called in term time when Labour/Momentum were able to target them with glowing promises on tuition fees which had the costings hidden in annexes to the Labour Manifesto.

Mrs May should have Hammond take these apart but he was kept away from the business of electioneering so these young people thought that all their Christmases had come at once.

May haughtily dismissed the costs by saying “We know Jeremy Corbyn’s costs don’t add up” without further explanation.

3) May did not attend the debates and in one Q&A session with an NHS nurse who had received no real pay rise for 9 years told the nurse “We will of course fund the NHS but there is no magic money tree”.

The body language was clear enough to me and to the television audience “You will just have to get on with it”.

There was not an ounce of compassion, remorse or understanding just a swift head turn to the next questioner.

My sister Elizabeth and I watched this exchange and the audience reaction which was “May hasn’t a clue she just doesn’t get it and does not care”.

There was no pretence or offer of hope for the future.

Being a realist and a Stoic I expect little from politicians and proceed on the basis that they are liars and scoundrels but to win elections or be in a people business you have to be able to at least pretend to like people.

May failed in this regard as well so the electorate punished her.

4) Then there were the U turns by May and her earlier climb down on fat cat pay when the CBI and the City tested her mettle and Hammond failed to back her despite the growing pay inequality which is now 450 to 1 when bonuses and emoluments are factored in.

5) The Dementia tax and IR35, the HMRC witch hunt against plumbers and small builders was an attack on the self-employed who are natural Conservatives as well as Pensioners who outnumber young people.
Above all the arrogance of May, who talks a good fight but does not deliver was further highlighted by the limp wristed response to ISIS jihadists on not one but three bouts of terrorism.

Her statement” I will keep you safe” was more empty rhetoric that convinced no-one. People punished her for that as well.

Finally of course there is the BBC and Channel 4 and their collections of biased left-wing reporters. May should have privatised the BBC as soon as she got into office and sold off Channel 4. In this way these roadblocks to reform could have been put to the sword but again nothing was done so their gnarled presenters and secular humanist reporters were left to lionize Jeremy Corbyn and make even more trouble for May than she was making for herself.

The refusal to cut foreign aid when people are sick to the back teeth of austerity and are angry about corrupt dictators stealing our aid money was the last straw leading to the result which we now see.

Yes, Jeremy Corbyn is the politician who came in from the cold. But given May’s disastrous ‘weak and wobbly’ performance, true Conservatives must quickly mount a leadership challenge, in the national interest.

John Gelmini