It’s always difficult to be tasked with writing a weekly political column when your deadline will inevitably mean the result is not known by time of publication.

Thus it was that on Thursday your scribe had been, along with most other commentators, predicting a hung parliament.

But that was to fail to take into account the fact that Ed Miliband has just presided over the worst massacre since George Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, except in this case the good guys lost.

Numerous factors and theories will no doubt be aired in the days and weeks to come as to the reason for the devastating result, which saw Labour limp in a poor second shedding casualties left, right and centre, including shadow chancellor Ed Balls.

Yes the mad eyed bison of British politics has been sent to the abattoir of public opinion.

The huge surge in support for the Scots nats played a part of course, with big names in the Lib Dems and Labour falling like skittles north of the border.

But, sad to say, the simple truth is Labour didn’t do a good enough job. They ran a weak, not to mention vague, campaign with a weak and vague leader based on policies apparently loosely based on the tenets of hara-kiri but without the determination and paid the price for their dithering.

The fact that the most reviled government in living memory was able to secure a slim majority speaks volumes both about the flaws in our electoral system and the seemingly infinite capacity for masochism among the British public.

About the only bonus Miliband can take from all this is that he’s not Nick Clegg.

The south-west looks like the killing fields, so total was the Lib Dem decimation both there and elsewhere.

As predicted Danny Alexander paid the price for his Tory schmoozing despite his desperate attempts to distance himself in recent weeks. So too did other big names, including Vince Cable, Simon Hughes and Charles Kennedy.

Even the darkest clouds, and they are gathering ominously, has a silver lining however. Tory employment minister Esther McVey got wiped out in Merseyside and looks ironically like she’s going to be in the jobs market soon.

And of course Ukip got nowhere.

The worst thing about the result, apart of course from the continued slashing of public services and brutal attacks on the vulnerable, is that we will have to look at Cameron and Osborne’s smug, fatuous faces for another five years.

That and Blair is bound to turn up soon with his smug “I told you so’s.”

I have spoken previously of the form of Stockholm syndrome that can develop between a columnist and their subject over the years but the last six weeks has had an effect more akin to aversion therapy.

I would rather stab needles in my eyes than have to look at any of them for one more second at the moment.

Blair did in fact crop up this week, but in Israel not Islington, personally issuing an appeal for former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert not to be jailed on corruption charges.

The Middle East peace envoy, showing that impartiality and lack of bias we have all come to expect from him, offered a glowing character reference for the disgraced Olmert who was convicted earlier this year of taking hundreds of thousands in brown paper bags from a US businessman.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Why on earth would the arch-war criminal and PR man for hire to despots around the world, Blair, be concerned about someone going to jail for taking back handers?

But moving on and if you thought, with a fair degree of justification, that politics this side of the Atlantic was insane, as the man said … you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Yes this week also saw the announcement by Republican Carly Fiorina that she has thrown her hat into the presidential ring.

For those of you unaware of Fiorina, and until this week there was no real reason why you should be, let’s have a quick look at her resume.

The former head of computer giant Hewlett Packard (HP), Fiorina is staking her claim as a pioneering executive prodigy: “It is only in the United States of America that a young woman can start as a secretary and become CEO of the largest technology company in the world,” she claimed recently.

“We went from a market laggard to market leader,” she boasted of her six years running the firm. “Unlike Hillary (Clinton), I have actually accomplished something.”

And she certainly has — it’s not everyone who can be nominated one of the worst CEOs in the entire US, repeatedly.

HP’s long-time director of corporate communications Roy Verley, said his ex-boss alienated colleagues with a “cult of Carly” that put self-promotion first.

“She didn’t know what she was doing and couldn’t deliver on her promises,” said Verley, who left HP in 2000.

Unfortunately, that sounds just like every US president in my lifetime.

We’re all doomed!