PROMISES, promises, promises.

Voters could be forgiven for feeling their heads are spinning over the array of goodies that have been pledged by the main parties as they seek to entice - or bribe - voters to their cause.

The Tories’ extra spending on public services – more on healthcare, education and police - is for south of the border but it would hand the Scottish Government a multi-billion pound consequential windfall.

Boris Johnson decided to forego a cut in company tax instead funnelling the money to pay for a tax cut by raising the National Insurance threshold; seen politically as targeting lower-paid workers, regarded by Tory strategists as key to backing Brexit.

The Tory leader learned from some of Theresa May’s campaign mistakes and kept to a don’t-scare-the-horses’ manifesto-lite approach.

A key pledge was the Minister for the Union’s determination to rule out “for good” another Scottish independence referendum while raising the spectre of a Corbyn-Sturgeon “coalition of chaos”. At his end-of-campaign rally, Mr Johnson noted: “We all know who would wear the trousers in that relationship.”

And then, of course, there was the big one: getting Brexit done. The Prime Minister used an array of metaphors to keep it front and centre, including driving a bulldozer through a nine-foot Styrofoam wall marked “gridlock”.

Labour’s Christmas box of delights was on an even mightier scale.

The renationalisation of public utilities would mean the state becoming much bigger. Big business and the better off were targeted with tax rises to pay for a splurge of an extra £83bn a year on public services.

And, of course, given Labour’s post-manifesto commitment to compensate the so-called Waspi women, borrowing would jump by another £58bn, slapping well over £400bn on the nation’s credit card for the parliament.

One interesting figure was that for every pound the Tories would spend on public services, Labour would splash out £28.

As ever smoke and mirrors were deployed with the Institute for Fiscal Studies – lauded by political parties outwith elections but dismissed within them – pointing out neither the Tories nor Labour were “being honest” with voters about the tax hikes needed to fund their spending plans.

Indeed, honesty was, as ever, another central factor in the campaign.

One notable moment came during the BBC Question Time leaders’ special when the deeply sceptical audience laughed with derision at some of Mr Johnson’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s responses.

Time and again, the PM’s integrity was questioned such as when the father of one of the London Bridge terror attack accused him of seeing only a political opportunity in his son’s death and not simply a tragedy and when the Conservative leader insisted there would be no customs border down the Irish Sea despite official documents saying otherwise.

The key moment came when Mr Johnson failed to look at a picture of a four-year-old boy waiting on a hospital floor for treatment and pocketed the reporter’s phone. Labour branded him a “disgrace”; the episode played into its hands not just on the Tory leader’s integrity but also on its key theme of NHS underfunding.

But Mr Corbyn did not have it all his own way either on the issue of trust.

After being denounced by the Chief Rabbi over his handling of anti-Semitism within Labour, the party leader’s big reveal on how UK-US trade talks meant the NHS was “up for sale” was somewhat overshadowed by suggestions Russian hackers had leaked the papers.

Then there was Labour’s worst own goal with Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Health Secretary, being caught on tape saying Labour’s chances of winning were “dire” and voters “couldn’t stand” Mr Corbyn.

It was noticeable how as each party sought to keep the campaign on its terms – the Conservatives on Brexit, Labour on the NHS – certain senior figures had been “disappeared”. So, no trace of Jacob Rees-Mogg, post his Grenfell gaffe, nor of Labour Remainer Keir Starmer as Labour HQ sought to target Leavers in northern England.

While Mr Johnson began the campaign with a poll lead touching 20 per cent, Tory HQ was always wary of complacency. And rightly so, as the polls began to narrow sharply.

The Conservative strategy to protect their leader as much as possible meant he avoided the forensic interrogation.

After Mr Corbyn suffered a car-crash interview at the hands of Andrew Neil, Tory HQ clearly decided it was better to take the hit of not facing the Scot’s laser beam of enquiry rather than suffer the humiliation of being burnt to shreds on prime time telly.

The Tory protect-the-leader strategy even at one point forced Mr Johnson into a fridge to escape the hostile fire of Good Morning Britain’s Piers Morgan.

As the Liberal Democrats’ hubris evaporated, going from forming a majority government to stopping Mr Johnson getting a Commons majority, Jo Swinson perhaps pinpointed the key moment of the entire election when Nigel Farage decided to withdraw Brexit Party candidates from Tory-held seats.

Today’s result will prove whether this was the crucial development or whether the great unknown of tactical voting by Leavers and Remainers could decide who gets to enter Downing St.