So what does it all mean?

First off, that Brexit will get done; in the sense that the UK will end its membership of the EU in January.

Thereafter, of course, will begin the extended status quo of the transition period when Boris Johnson will seek to tie up a trade deal with the EU by the autumn. Chances are, there will be an extension to this too as no one, except the Prime Minister and the faithful Downing St pooch Dilyn, believes he can do it within just a few months.

Unlike David Cameron or Theresa May, the Prime Minister now, with a healthy Commons majority of 78, does not have to rely on any other party to get things through the Commons; the Queen’s Speech, which will be pretty much the same as the one last month, will be zipped through Parliament next Thursday with an expectation that the First Reading of the Withdrawal Bill will be announced the day after, so wearied MPs, journalists and voters can sit back and enjoy a well-earned festive break.

Given the depth of Labour’s defeat – even worse, dare I say, than Michael Foot’s in 1983 and the infamous “longest suicide note in history” – then it seems unlikely the party could even contemplate winning the election in 2024; no Opposition has ever overcome such a large deficit in a single election cycle. Which could well mean the next Labour Prime Minister is not even in Westminster yet.

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The internal inquiry into Labour’s dreadful performance will begin after what Jeremy Corbyn called a “period of reflection”. Just how long this lasts is anyone’s guess; two days or two months? His Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has ruled himself out but another Corbynista might be waiting in the wings. Remember the party membership, which now decides who the leader is, remains staunchly Corbynite.

Already, there is a sense of denial in some Labour quarters. That the reason the party did so badly was not because of its “confetti of promises” manifesto but, rather, was purely down to Brexit and the Opposition’s garbled message led by a leader, who decided on the biggest issue of the day to remain neutral.

There was even talk that the defeat was down largely to the nasty media or even in part because of the weather.

Everyone knows that for a large swath of the electorate the problem was not Brexit, the media or the weather but Mr Corbyn, who, like Ed Miliband before him, simply did not strike a lot of people as a Prime Minister.

The red wall of northern England was collapsed by Boris’s Brexit bulldozer with the remarkable sight of Labour seats across its old industrial heartland like Tony Blair’s former constituency of Sedgefield falling to a blue surge.

As Labour begins its “period of reflection” – Westminsterspeak for an almighty family bust-up – so too will the deflated Liberal Democrats, who lost their leader Jo Swinson to the SNP landslide.

She was warned back in September at the Lib Dem conference that promoting a policy of revoking Brexit was a step too far; that it would push the centrist party to an extreme, becoming a mirror image of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.

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But the orange tails were up, buoyed by opinion polls at the time that they were neck and neck with the Tories and Labour on 20 points and anything was possible.

Ms Swinson’s declaration that she could be the next inhabitant of Downing St seeing her party perform a ginormous leap from 20 seats to 326 always seemed ridiculous. Hubris, as always, was followed by nemesis.

And so, like Labour, it looks like it will take many years for the Lib Dems to claw their way back to anything like the number of MPs they had under Paddy Ashdown, Charles Kennedy or Nick Clegg. All the converts, Chuka Ummuna, Sam Gyimah and Luciana Berger failed to secure seats under the orange banner.

Interestingly, while Mr Johnson has been given licence to forge forward with pure Conservative policies, he recognised in his dawn rally speech that he has a new responsibility; to meet the aspirations of a tranche of working class traditional Labour seats.

A rumour is doing the rounds at Westminster that he will venture to northern England tomorrow to make a speech, underpinning his commitment to his new blue-collar constituency.

The northern gains will change the Tory Party, providing it with what it had back in the 1950s and 1960s a large working class element in England.

Of course, because Brexit was the main determinant as to why Labour Leavers backed the Johnson programme, then they may, for the most part, have only “lent” the Tory leader their votes and will revert to a more traditional Labour stance the next time round. So, there is a risk as well as an opportunity for the PM in the years ahead.

So, while Labour and the Lib Dems lick their wounds, the biggest challenge to the Conservatives in the immediate future will come from a reinvigorated SNP force with Nicola Sturgeon insisting she now, with 48 MPs, has an even stronger mandate to call for indyref2.

READ MORE: Sturgeon: defeated Tories can't stand in way of Indyref2

In her post-election speech in Edinburgh this morning, the First Minister told Mr Johnson: "It is the right of the people of Scotland and you as the leader of a defeated party in Scotland have no right to stand in the way."

But the PM will do just that. The Minister for the Union is not wanting to become the Minister who lost the Union. In an article for The Herald earlier this week, he wrote that he wanted to stop the SNP’s plans for indyref2 “for good”.

He declared: “I am a Unionist to my very bones and the Union will never be broken up on my watch.”

It seems the only way for Ms Sturgeon and her colleagues to break down this blue wall of resistance to another vote on Scotland’s is to build up such a momentum of support in opinion polls and at the 2012 Holyrood election that Mr Johnson has to relent.

So as the Tories look to a new “One Nation Conservative” dawn by securing Britain’s exit from the EU and an unrelenting constitutional battle of attrition with the SNP, Labour and the Liberal Democrats begin their long, dark night of the soul. It could last for some time.