The election really made it feel that Christmas had come early.
Unfortunately the part of Christmas that actually came wasn’t a morning of eating selection boxes while listening to carols and joyfully opening presents with loved ones but the day after St Stephen’s Day when you’re bloated, grumpy and have developed such an addiction to chocolate that you’re eating handfuls of Quality Street for breakfast.
Seeing the results of the first exit poll after voting closed was very similar to that slump you experience an hour after downing a few glasses of Shloer - a slump that leaves you in the foetal position, vowing never to touch sugar again.
While no one expected Jeremy Corbyn to win, least of all Jeremy Corbyn, the extent of the Labour defeat came as a shock.
Corbyn’s campaign did feel like a Gremlins 2-style unwanted sequel to Michael Foot’s disastrous 1983 run. Foot’s manifesto - which offered similar promises to re-nationalise public services - may have been the “longest suicide note in history” but Labour had clearly forgotten any lessons learned from that campaign.
Not for the first time, the party’s leadership seemed out-of-touch and its messages unclear, particularly around Brexit.
Former home secretary Alan Johnson’s assessment of the Corbyn-backing Momentum campaign group within Labour was particularly withering. Describing Corbyn as “someone who couldn’t lead the working class out of a paper bag”, he claimed Momentum founder Jon Lansman had set up a “cult”.
“I’m afraid the working classes have always been a big disappointment for Jon and his cult,” he said.
Happily for Boris Johnson, the former Labour voters who opted for his party in their droves did not disappoint him, although they can expect some unpleasant surprises in the next Parliamentary term when Brexit fails to deliver the cash bonanza the Tories promised.
Still reeling from an election campaign marked by absurd Tory stunts (Boris driving a digger marked ‘Get Brexit Done’ through a pile of boxes; Boris pretending to answer impromptu questions while lurking around Conservative offices like a lumpen Ghost of Christmas Aaargghh; Boris claiming Brexit will lead to a baby boom - although hopefully one which will not include the father-of-five/six) the first few days of the new Conservative cabinet passed in a blur.
Downing Street’s mutterings about supposed anti-Tory bias within the BBC and threats to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee were to be expected.
But the immediate assault on basic democracy was something else.
The government now has two ministers who weren’t even democratically elected.
Zac Goldsmith, who lost his seat by nearly 8,000 votes, was elevated to the peerage so he could hold on to his job as environment minister. Nicky Morgan, who stood down as an MP in October and didn’t even run in the election, was also made a life peer so Mr Johnson could keep her on as culture secretary.
Mr Goldsmith's knack of spinning gold out of Parliamentary losses is almost as impressive as Nigel Farage's track record.
In 2016, Mr Goldsmith failed to be elected as London mayor - losing to Labour's Sadiq Khan.
That October, he stood down as a Conservative MP in protest at the decision to build a third runway at Heathrow airport. Although he stood in the subsequent by-election as an independent, he was beaten by the Liberal Democrat candidate.
Just a few months later, in the 2017 general election, he took back the Richmond Park seat by just 45 votes.
Now it doesn't even matter that he lost the seat again. An unelected peer is making decisions about the environment - surely the most important brief in an era of frightening climate change. And the problem is he can't even be voted out. Mr Goldsmith could enjoy a lifetime of voting on our laws without having to be held accountable to voters.
There's no doubt that the House of Lords - which has never been a body representative of wider society - needs to be urgently reformed. But with Mr Johnson's commanding majority in Parliament that will not be done soon.
The prime minister is using his powers to become more like a US President - and we all know how that has turned out.
