Jo Swinson and Chuka Umunna were rivals in the field of suicidal opportunism. Now they are both politically dead

Swinson wasn’t the first woman to yield to Johnson’s desire and live to regret it, but she is the first to leave him holding the baby

On a slightly merrier election night long ago, schadenfreude was the cherry on the cake.

In the early hours of 2 May 1997, a tidal wave of joy flooded every nook and cranny of the nation when the returning officer in Enfield Southgate announced Michael Portillo’s demise.

No one will ever publish a best seller entitled “Were You Still Up For Jo Swinson?”. For one thing, few of us will have had the stomach to stay up until news of her defeat to the SNP in Dunbartonshire East broke. For another, it was hardly cause for ecstatic whooping and drunken laps of honour around the garden even for those stoics who did. She was never big or horrid enough for that.