OK. No point in remaining silent.

Sometimes you just have to hold your hands up and say “fair cop”.

In rather a long time in politics I tried to avoid second-guess the electorate. It is very bad form for a practicing politician to do so. They normally bite you in the bum for doing so. Since I left public life I should care less.

Before the polls closed I genuinely had not expected the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition. After they closed it quickly became obvious that it was one of the only two outcomes that were likely.

Why did I not say so? Simply because I was on holiday by the time the votes were counted. Part of not being quite so sad and having a life is not feeling the need to justify what I think. Nonetheless, it was the most civilised election night I’ve spent in a long while – results coming in from about 4pm through till seven, a break for dinner and back to spend the evening drinking wine and listening to Today at 10pm.

I got it somewhat wrong for two reasons. I genuinely did not believe that the Conservatives would fail to get their majority – they were not far off, after all – another dozen seats and they could have stitched up a deal with the Unionists of Northern Ireland that would have allowed them to govern. Secondly, Labour did much better than I thought they would. I had expected Labour’s vote to crumble toward the Liberal Democrats – particularly in the South and this would let through the Conservatives in at least sufficient number.

It didn’t come about. Instead of the 200 or so Labour MP I had expected the Labour ‘ground war’ in enough of the marginal seats was sufficient to hold the line and the result was broadly in line with the national swing. The Liberal Democrats were unable, as has normally proved the case, to win seats in significant number from Labour.

In one respect I was indeed right. The Liberal Democrats did not end up with the realistic ability to choose with whom they would make a deal – the numbers just didn’t work out that way. This is where their inability to coalesce with Labour foundered whether or not they had wanted to.

Labour was right to try to make a deal with the Liberals – because Labour supporters expect their party to do everything it can to keep the Conservatives out. There is no disgrace in having tried and failed. That said David Cameron was quite right to say that Labour had lost the election and, while he hadn’t won it, his party had more votes and more seats. So the Liberals took the only stable deal that was on the table. When I took off from LAX Gordon Brown was still the Prime Minister, (having done very well at flying round ash clouds), when I landed he had flown off to Scotland and Cleggaron had been installed. Having lost and lost badly it was almost certainly better for democracy that Labour did not lead a coalition. Mr Cameron grabbed the opportunity potentially to sink the Liberal Democrats in the longer term and to govern without being hostage to the awkward squad in his own party. Nadine Dorries and friends can do little more than seeth quietly. The Daily Mail will prove less quiet.

What will happen next? Perhaps crystal ball gazing is unwise – none of us know. Not all Governments prove to be unpopular – the public likes the idea of politicians working together, on the other hand there are many thousands, possibly millions of voters who supported the Liberals as a tactical vote to keep the Conservatives out. This has been happening for many years in the South of England. It is hard to see many of those people remaining with the Liberals, so the result could yet be more Conservative MPs and the diminution of the Liberal Democrats, but who can say? Most probably there will be a bit of both, but what goes around tends to come around.

We continue to live in interesting times.