‘Where are you?’ I said. ‘I’m in No10,’ whispered Michael . . .

Once upon a time, a week was a long time in politics; these days it takes just a few hours for everything to change.

I never bought into the Tory landslide people had been predicting. In a decade spent, if not at the front line of British politics then definitely hanging out behind the bike sheds, I’ve learned you should never take the electorate for granted.

That said, even I was not expecting quite such a jolt when the exit poll came out. Later it became clear the Government was facing a perfect storm: a surge in first-time voters seduced by Jeremy corbyn’s populism coupled with the fallout from the so-called ‘dementia tax’.

But even that was as nothing compared with the surprise I got on Sunday, when I called my husband — only to find him not in his constituency, as I had expected, but somewhere else entirely.

I knew the second he answered that something was afoot. Instead of his Wife Voice (a cheery ‘Hallooo!’) he was using his Serious Voice, an altogether more muted affair.

‘Where on earth are you?’ I said, suddenly worried something bad had happened. ‘I’m sitting in no 10 with a very nice private secretary,’ he said, switching to his I-can’t-Talk-now Voice.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘ Quite,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you back then,’ I said. ‘ Good idea,’ he said.

UNTIL then, it had been a relatively normal Sunday. With Michael in his constituency ( Surrey Heath), my daughter at a friend’s house and me at home helping my son with revision. Sure, I had half an eye on the reshuffle — but since there had been no indication that Michael’s services would be required (nor was he expecting there to be) I wasn’t paying much attention.

As I said, there’s no predicting politics these days. And now, less than a year after being out on his ear, my husband is back around the cabinet table, as Secretary of State for the environment — and the red box is back on the kitchen table.

As is often the case these days, I saw the news on Twitter before I heard it from the horse’s mouth.

Michael Gove was, as they say, trending, which sounds glamorous but just meant lots of Labour activists exploding with fury and venting it all on social media. For people who claim to inhabit the moral high ground, it amazes me how quickly they can turn spittle-faced.

Luckily, he’s used to it, as am I and the children, although our Lhasa Apso dog Muffin, I know, takes a different view being of Tibetan descent and therefore uncompromising when it comes to fighting off the forces of communism.

Seriously, though. This election was very bad for the conservatives. Good MPs have lost their seats and activists have been let down. But the party does at least have a leader who, for all her mistakes, has had the grace to apologise, to accept that a tough lesson has been learned — and put the wider good of the country ahead of personal pride.

By contrast, corbyn has never apologised — nor, I suspect, ever will — for his failure to condemn anti-Semitism in Labour, or for his support for the IRA. The idealistic young who so passionately supported him seem unperturbed by this aspect of his character.

I can understand this. If I were young, naive and staring down the barrel of student debt and job insecurity, I, too, would probably warm to the nice beardy man with a bagful of promises as opposed to the faintly scary lady in the leopard-print shoes.

This young generation is no more radical than the last; it’s just that, having grown up with the internet, they are wholly influenced by it.

Sometimes this influence is completely harmless, but all too often it is deeply sinister. cyberbullying, stupid crazes, revenge porn. Or the radicalisation of young Muslims by terrorists such as ISIS who know how to get inside the heads of vulnerable youngsters.

In fact, many of the techniques adopted by Momentum — the hardLeft, digitally aware movement credited with corbyn’s cult status among the under-25s — mirror the methodology of extremist propaganda. Specific groups are targeted and half-truths catch on, multiply and coalesce like tumours.

If the Government wants to have any chance of wooing the new voters, it needs to understand this and fight this cancer intelligently.

Forget TV debates, party political broadcasts and ministers parroting the same old slogans: we need to speak the language of the young.

However gratifying it is to see my husband back in the cabinet, it will all be for nothing unless we do this. If you fight an analogue campaign in a digital age, you’ll get a kicking.