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I stayed up till 3.00am GMT to watch the results come in and have now had a time to think about what the significance of the Obama victory is. Here are the six thoughts I take from this.

• Race was only part of the story. Freshness and change is a much more powerful election story than experience.
• It ends Brown's cheap jibe about "This is not time for a novice" - it clearly is. In fact his comment is now seen to be as empty as "No more boom and bust". It embeds the idea that 'change' is a force and that this Government is on its way out. What does what Brown said teach us? Well, that probably we all need to be careful about what we promise and that Obama will now learn that the hard way.
• That actually no party has a monopoly on the progressive tag. The progressives are those who best articulate the fears, wants and needs of the people - regardless of political party.
• That John McCain is a good man who was caught in a squeeze between Obama's colour and GW Bush's car crash of a Presidency.
• That what all politicians can learn is how we can better use the internet to connect with voters and the public. It is time for there to be a new way to engage young people so that they can get involved. Political parties of all colours are getting older and older and the young are frankly disinterested. It just might be that building an online movement might be the best way to tackle this. I for one will be giving a lot of thought about "the wisdom of the crowds". What the Obama victory proves is that it is nonsense to say the young do not vote, they just need a reason to get engaged.
• That the BBC is completely rubbish at serious election coverage. I turned over for a short while yesterday and it was frankly embarassing. I am told they had over a hundred staff in the USA covering the elections. I can see no reason why they were even there, it would have been better to get a feed from a US TV network. I watched CNN and Fox and took the interenet through MSNBC who had a fantastic interactive map.

Finally, for me, I have to say that I am becoming more convinced that the US election system is one of the best in the world. Tony Blair has neutered our system and change needs to come about. I was in the USA for the 2000 election and followed the hanging chads to Florida. Despite all that nonsense I came away from that experience with a real sense that Americans are proud of their system and whether they vote or not they feel empowered - Obama's victory has certainly made that clear.

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