From Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, a loose cannon of a man but who is occasionally capable of hitting the nail on the head (the bold bits are mine):

"No, it was not just Jeremy Corbyn. Last week’s crushing defeat of the left was also caused by the Liberal Democrat party splitting the vote. Yet again, by offering itself as the vote launderer of British liberalism, it has served as merely the fellow traveller of British Conservatism. Boris Johnson owes it a huge debt of gratitude.

Misreading election results – largely so as to gloat or spread blame – is the traditional folly of post-election analysts. Boris Johnson won the election with a thumping parliamentary victory, but the operative word is parliamentary. His 43.6% of the vote was ahead of Theresa May’s only by 1.2 percentage points, and dozens of his MPs were elected with less than 50% of the vote. Most of these – such as Kensington, Keighley, Bridgend and Chingford – were seats that Labour would have won had there been no Lib Dem presence.



As for the election being a “second referendum” on Brexit, anti-Brexit or second referendum parties won more votes than did Johnson, even assuming all Tories were pro-Brexit. Yes, leave voters appear to have swarmed to the Conservatives, notably in the north, and are thus probably short-term. But the Lib Dem vote soared by 1.3m or 4.1 percentage points, while Corbyn’s fell by 2.6m. Johnson’s rose by only 304,000.The reality is that the left-of-centre vote was calamitously split. Polling during the campaign saw Labour surge only when the Lib Dems appeared to collapse."

Don't be complacent now, Boris...