Immediately after the election, it seemed like that wave might not be enough to carry Labour to victory: the final count took a Labour-Greens coalitoon to 54 seats, compared to National's 56.
Together with their Tory opponents, most opinion pollsters, and much of the press, they believed they could carry Labour over the line into government.
Pieces of paper carrying Labour and Tory promises blow in the breeze outside Westminster.
Flanked by supporters carrying Labour One Nation banners in front of a Georgian house in Middleton, Miliband said: "This constituency is at the heart of our country.
"Equal ownership doesn't work, because some people's labour will always carry the labour of others," she said.
At last week's meeting, Wallace, himself a former spin doctor, told Cameron such criticism was par for the course for politicians, pointing out that as the only card-carrying Labour paper, the Daily Mirror was duty bound to heap opprobrium on the leader of the Conservative party on a near-daily basis.
This hypothesis can be particularly restrictive for the period that we analyse, as many euro area countries carried out labour market reforms to increase labour market flexibility.
Rajoy's government carried out labour market reforms in 2012 that made it easier for companies to fire staff, and to bring in more part-time contracts, and the prime minister said there were plans to introduce further such changes.
They think that the health service, not the economy, is their main electoral challenge, and so have promised to carry on with Labour's spending levels and its gently market-based health-service reforms.
More than a few times lately I've heard repeated with irrefutable certainty the myth that the national feelgood factor created by England winning the football World Cup in 1966 helped to carry Harold Wilson's Labour party to victory in the general election of that year.
His former bosses Daniel Doran, 67, and David Daniel Doran, 42, deny forcing him to carry out compulsory labour and are on trial at Cardiff Crown Court.
