These are the four essential takeaways for Sir Keir Starmer

PICTURE Sir Keir Starmer in his Downing Street study this evening.

- Tom Newton Dunn

His No10 steps speech done, Britain’s new Prime Minister has just written his letters of last resort to the Royal Navy’s four nuclear missile submarine commanders. A sobering moment but also a reminder of the awesome power Sir Keir has just inherited. Who could then deny him a moment to lean back in Rishi Sunak’s old chair and glance up at the TV.

On it are the scenes of utter carnage that voters inflicted on the men and women who ran the country for the past 14 years. More than 200 Tory MPs not just out of power but out of a job too, defenestrated entirely in the biggest bloodbath of the Conservative Party’s history.

Farewell Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt, Gillian Keegan, Mark Harper, Michelle Donelan, Johnny Mercer, Liam Fox, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Liz Truss, the biggest scalp of all.

My enemies are slain and I am victorious, Sir Keir might be tempted to think. And that would be the first massive mistake of his premiership. Because this is not his victory, and neither is it Labour’s.

What should our new PM’s real takeaways be from last night’s electoral thunderbolt?

Takeaway one: Of all the superlatives and jaw-dropping statistics that it served up, this is the most pertinent: the combined vote share won by Labour (36 per cent) and the Conservatives (23 per cent) is the lowest for Britain’s two top parties ever.