The eight pictures you’d only ever seen on a British election night

It was a night when British politics underwent serious reconstructive surgery. Depending on your allegiances it was glorious, surprising, delightful, shocking and miserable. Hundreds of candidates are waking up in a very different world.

Whatever the colour of your rosette, however, there were also moments of high comedy. No electoral system better understands the potential, within all that life-changing seriousness, for the odd giggle. The candidates managed to maintain their sense of humour, too. Even Liz Truss, just about. Here were some of the highlights.

The Prime Minister’s count has been a target for pranksters going back to the Monster Raving Loony Party. Its modern expression arrived in the form of YouTuber Niko Omilana, who won 160 votes in Rishi Sunak’s seat, Richmond, affording him the chance to hold up a large L sign as the former Prime Minister gave his victory speech. L for learner, L for loss or L for loser? All three work: as Sunak said, “there is much to learn and reflect on”.

While others stuck to the usual campaign tour of factories, schools and hospitals, the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey used the past six weeks as an opportunity to live like a 10-year-old boy: paddleboarding, bungee jumping, going on the teacup ride. Fittingly, he and his party celebrated their historic gains like England had just scored. Davey really did dance like nobody was watching.

Despite Sir Keir Starmer’s triumph, he was not the largest red figure of the night. At his count in north London, he was congratulated by his rival, Bobby Elmo Smith, dressed in a full-sized bright costume of Elmo from Sesame Street. Sir Keir thanked Elmo for putting himself forward for public service. Also on stage was Nick the Incredible Flying Brick, wearing an outsized top hat. A reminder for Starmer, as he prepares to take the nuclear controls: deep down, we’re all muppets.

A more professional joke candidate is Count Binface, the intergalactic space alter ego of the comedian Jon Harvey, who has been a reassuring presence in our politics since 2019. Binface won 308 votes in Richmond, enough to finish sixth. As well as his votes, he celebrated his “highest ever height advantage” over the PM, 2ft 6in.

After years of double-breasted patrician superiority, Jacob Rees-Mogg was handed an ignominious drubbing last night, losing his bastion of North East Somerset with a 24.5% fall-off in Conservative votes. Even worse, he took his defeat standing next to the Monster Raving Loony Party candidate, Barmy Brunch, who was wearing a baked-bean balaclava.

Rees-Mogg managed to see the funny side, quoting Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in his concession speech. “From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success.” Or in other words: sometimes the tastiest breakfasts come from the coldest tins.

These have been tough years for the Scottish Labour party, so they could be forgiven for celebrating the exit poll in Glasgow like the Tartan Army after a long day on the Tennent’s.

Meanwhile, the hunt went on for SNP votes. A microscope would have been no use. After years of scandal and leadership wrangling, the Scots nationalists had a miserable night, on course to lose all but a handful of their seats. Their triumphalism has given way to a large dose of hubris.

As Wodehouse said, it’s never difficult to distinguish between an SNP member who has lost their seat and a ray of sunshine.

Liz Truss kept the crowd waiting at the South West Norfolk count like Madonna on a stadium tour. But with less fabulousness and without an essential accessory – her rosette.

It looked to all the world, as she shuffled on stage to the sound of slow handclaps and the longsuffering gaze of her rivals, as if she’d been yanked from a getaway car just as it was about to accelerate away