When the first Scottish result in the 2017 general election was declared in Rutherglen, the Labour spokeswoman on the BBC’s election night programme, Pauline MacNeill, didn’t even know the name of the victorious Labour candidate.

To say that Labour was surprised at their success would be an understatement. They had very little effort on the ground and their leader, Kezia Dugdale, had a poor campaign. But Labour even made a comeback in Glasgow, where many Labourites had all but given up hope.

The reason for the Labour revival is the Corbyn effect and the late swing that destroyed Theresa May's brief premiership. But what may have salvaged the Conservative government, at least as a minority, is the revival of the Scottish Tories. In other words, if the Conservatives remain in Number Ten, we have Scotland to thank - or blame.

There will be many who blame Nicola Sturgeon for the SNP's double squeeze. Their spokespeaple were insisting that they had still “won” the election in Scotland, but this is no kind of victory. The SNP group has been decapitated, with the loss of their Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, their elder statesman, Alex Salmond, and their Chief Whip, Mike Weir. It will be for the SNP women, in particular Mhairi Black, to pick up the pieces of the SNP's Westminster operation.

There is no disguising the scale of this defeat for the SNP. Of course it is true that this is still a historically high level of SNP MPs – back in the 2010 general election they won only 6 seats. But the significance of this result involves more than mere Westminster arithmetic. I think we can safely say that indyref2 will be off the agenda for the foreseeable future. Indeed, this may be the election that saved the Union – that's certainly how the Tories and the Scottish Labour Party see it.

It is beginning to look as if Nicola Sturgeon made a catastrophic miscalculation in calling for a second independence referendum when she did. Scots clearly do not feel so strongly about Brexit that they were prepared to contemplate an early referendum to avoid leaving the EU. Her declaration of indyref2 brought the Conservatives back from the political graveyard in the North East and the Borders in particular. It clearly antagonised many of those former Labour voters who had turned to the SNP because they regarded it as the more credible party of social democracy.

But it was above Jeremy Corbyn’s performance, not indyref, that brought Labour back into contention. The Scottish Labour preoccupation with the Union largely benefitted the Scottish Tories since they are the party of the Union par excellence. It was the radical Labour manifesto that sealed the deal for many left wing SNP supporters, especially the young and social media savvy ones. They saw little point in voting for a party that could not form a government in Westminster – the SNP – when there was a chance of putting a real socialist in Number Ten: Jeremy Corbyn.

This is Mr Corbyn's finest hour. He has defied the hated Murdoch Press, and contrary to the Sun headline, has placed Theresa May “in the Bin”. The attempt to portray him as a terrorist sympathiser backfired catastrophically for the Conservatives. Theresa May thought she couldn’t lose this election and was intoxicated with the prospect of a three figure majority. . But she did. And now, with the Brexit negotiations only ten days away, the UK is without that “strong and stable” government she promised.

With Boris Johnson waiting in the wings, we can be sure that Mrs May's remaining tenure in Number Ten will be short. However, as the UK heads into the political unknown, it could be that the the poor shell-shocked British voters may find they are being asked to go through yet another general election before the year is out.