The Tories win by manipulating FPTP. The reality is elections are swung by relatively tiny numbers of votes in less than a hundred marginals, and if you concentrate all your firepower there and lie a lot - and if you have the press and media in your pocket to cover the essentials elsewhere - you can easily swing a win.

With continental PR, the Tories wouldn't even have a working majority.

So while they did win more votes, they certainly didn't win voter approval for the supermajority they're operating with. That supermajority is a handy artefact of the UK's antiquated electoral system, and makes it very hard for other parties to exert any influence on the government.

None of which solves the immediate problem, which is that the UK is clearly heading towards outright post-imperial fascist senility, albeit with some comedy trimmings.

The unknowns are how long Johnson hangs on for - it's unlikely to be much past Jan 1, IMO - and who will take over when he's gone.

The bigger unknown is how far are they willing to take this?

If the combination of Covid, trade war, and Brexit is allowed to proceed, it will create the kind of mass destitution we're more used to seeing a hot war. At some point the population will break, although without organised resistance it won't do much except mill around throwing petrol bombs and getting shot at and interned - basically the Troubles, but in mainland cities.

They may be a hot war too. The Tories are clearly setting up the EU as the enemy, and considering their backers would love to see a hot war between the EU and the UK, it's not wise to assume it can't happen.

It may not be a very hot war - the French still have nukes of their own, after all - but some skirmishes at sea would play very well in some parts of Westminster.

It's going to be a very grim few years.