Writing comment columns isn't as easy as it looks. The mechanics aren't too tricky but, as the election made abundantly clear, having an opinion doesn't mean you know what you are talking about.

And I note that many of the small band of commentators who went against national media-received opinion and called the election right (think Dan Hodges, Phil Collins and Danny Finkelstein) have one thing in common – they have directly relevant personal experience, having lived and breathed political campaigns. Knowledge trumped intuition.