Oddly, I’m not dismayed by the rout of the Conservatives. I welcome it. I don’t even recognise the party.

From 2015 most of its key people were Manchurian Candidates, owned, controlled and run by a variety of below-the-radar cabals financed by outside-the-UK influencers. They had no interest in the survival of the Conservatives. They wanted to destroy the party and turn the UK into a Trumpian ally off the coast of the EU.

By the time this column is published we’ll have a clearer idea of the scale of the defeat inflicted upon Sunak, as well as the precise number of Conservatives who have actually made it onto the opposition benches.

We’ll also know if Reform has secured the votes necessary to scare the remaining elements of the Conservative Party into the lurch to the right you mentioned; or whether the remnants will ‘stiffen the sinews’ and take the 10 years or so of the Starmer era to return the party to the centre of politics. Irrespective of how well Reform does, I’m still not persuaded that there is sufficient appetite across the UK for the sort of populism we’re seeing in both the States and parts of the EU.

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I do agree that the sense of and definition of ‘Britishness’........

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