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It’s the morning after the night before, and that seems as good a time as any for an immediate hot take on what we’ve just seen (a process far easier than our lamentable failure to predict anything in advance). Here’s four quick takes:

1. Values and vision still play in modern politics

If there’s a corpse to be finally buried as a result of this election it’s the aggressive, attack style campaigning employed particularly by the Conservatives. The relentlessly negative campaigns focused on provoking fear, but with little positive message to underpin a political vision. It is a type of campaign which scraped home in the Scottish referendum and 2015 election, but lost the Brexit referendum.

The patronising project fear tactics, without a positive vision do not resonate with people; this election should finally prove that. Corbyn’s manifesto may have been a pipe dream, but it did at least value something and point to a vision of a better world. The same could be said of Conservative success in Scotland, where a more positive vision of confident unionism found a willing electorate in a way that their English colleagues failed to do as effectively.

Politicians that can find a compelling vision based on something more than soundbites and negativity can cut through, they can matter, and for those who would hope to see a more values–based politics in the future that ought to be a good thing.

2. A hung parliament brings an opportunity for a more consensual politics for the common good.

One of the features of our Westminster style of democracy that seems most potentially at odds with a Christian vision of the Common Good is the winner takes all nature of the system. A prime minister with a simple majority of MPs can force through virtually any policy they please. Indeed in the design of the early European project this was precisely why there was a deliberate effort to avoid having a parliament for fear it would create too many winners and losers. Hung parliaments, coalitions and party agreements are a nightmare for politicians and make governing far more difficult than being able to rail road policies through a stacked Commons, but they do provide a chance at developing a more consensual politics.

With all this talk about divisions and polarised politics perhaps it is no bad thing that a few of our leaders are going to have to talk to one another, and even compromise, for the sake of the county. If they are forced to spend a bit more time talking and a bit less time shouting at one another then we may yet see some of that kinder, gentler politics we were all promised.

3. Young people are not an alien people

If ever there is a more patronising political myth it is that “young people” spend all their time on social media and can never be induced to vote or actually do anything about their lefty views. The past seven years has seen that generation take something of a battering, with their benefits removed, their university fees increased and unlikely to ever own a home without significant parental assistance.

It would be easy to dismiss the high youth turnout this time as a simple response to a couple of costly gifts – notably an end to university fees. Easy, but wrong, since Labour was polling well with younger voters even before that pledge was made, and have signed up en masse to support the Labour party to the extent that it is now the largest political party in Europe.

Watching Canterbury turn Labour after almost 100 years should leave no one in any doubt that younger generations are happy to be politically engaged when someone actually bothers engaging with them and offers an alternative. There is a lesson in that for the Church too, which can also be guilty of refusing to wrestle with those questions of engagement. It is easy to criticise younger people for not showing up, harder to bother finding out why and working out a way to change the situation. If you engage them, they will come.

4. Get used to a far less English–dominated politics.

For the past few years Westminster politics has been pretty English, with some focus on devolution and Scotland after Brexit (helped by the then substantial SNP presence in parliament), and pretty little on Northern Ireland or Wales. The lack of Welsh and Scottish Conservative MPs was one factor in this, the extent of devolution another. That is about to change. For one thing after years of being overlooked despite the ongoing chaos in Stormont it now looks like the government will be reliant on the DUP to get anything done. Quite what price the DUP will demand for their support is unclear, but expect the Irish border to rapidly move much higher up the priority list in Brexit negotiations.

In fact the situation is more difficult even than that for the government. The Conservatives (and Ruth Davidson in particular) have done well to get 13 MPs, who will have to play a critical role in holding the Conservative vote together. This presents a problem, however. David Cameron’s introduction of EVEL (English Votes for English Laws) restricts the ability of Scottish MPs to vote on legislation that affects England (including such behemoths as the NHS and education, which are run separately in Scotland than England). Managing that will take care – but will certainly see a boost in the importance of non–English MPs.

Ben Ryan is Researcher at Theos |  @BenedictWRyan

Image by Karl–Ludwig Poggemann on Flickr, available under this Creative Commons Licence