If the Conservatives should blame anyone for their electoral defeat, it is Sir Lynton Crosby

What with the country now being even more ungovernable and an even bigger international laughing stock than before, we must prepare for the possibility that the “period of stability” promised by Theresa May at 03.36am while standing four feet away from an intergalactic spacelord, known as Lord Buckethead, may not come to pass.

And that leaves the Conservatives with a problem. Should they choose not to be led by a woman who detonated their majority for a bit of a laugh then stood on the steps of No 10 as if absolutely nothing had happened, there will need to be another leader, and another election.

And if that is to happen, they will, surely need to find themselves a new strategist.

It is just over a year since Sir Lynton Crosby was knighted for “service to politics”, an auspicious occasion at the palace that just so happened to occur on the same day as his client Zac Goldsmith was disowned by his own sister for leafleting south London Hindus to tell them Sadiq Khan planned to steal their family jewellery.

And it is just over a day since Sir Lynton’s latest triumph, of taking a British Prime Minister widely regarded as the safest pair of hands in politics, pushing her through the now immaculately tuned Crosby sausage machine, and watching her emerge at the other end with her reputation, majority, authority, party, country and dignity in tatters.

Until recently, at this point in the Crosby cycle, the campaign that has been so heavily criticised for weeks by the folks he likes to call “Eddie the Expert” and “Carrie the Commentator” wins a stunning victory. Then Sir Lynton pens a single article, settling scores against those who dared to doubt his genius (as Tim Montgomerie of The Times well knows).

This time, however, it is hard to avoid the overwhelming sensation that as Sir Lynton circled again on the weak spots of the election machine, and its media aspects in particular, that the people decided that on this occasion, no, they did not fancy being mugged of their democratic rights, yet again.

It may well mean that should another election arrive in October, whoever wins it might have to do so by some means other than repeating the same two sound bites over and over again for a period of seven straight weeks, shoehorning them into every answer, no matter what the question. It may yet be that the next prime minister is a fully functioning human being.

They might even have to crack a joke, or worse, a policy. They might even have to give someone something to smile about.

Goldsmith, at the end of his Crosby-led humiliation, did offer the inexcusable but nonetheless reasonable excuse that he should have done what his campaign team told him a bit less. It is difficult to wonder whether, in Theresa May’s constant failure to sound anything other than unhinged, as she referred everything back to the “strong and stable leadership” she made stunningly clear she was not in fact able to provide, she too was only following Crosby orders.

As for the next election, though nothing can surprise anyone anymore, I still, I think, just about, maintain that Jeremy Corbyn cannot win a convincing one for Labour. He might, though, at some point, decide he might show someone else in his party how they might do so.