Parliament’s new tribe

Politics is such a fickle game that it’s perfectly acceptable to believe six impossible things before breakfast without ever having to apologise for being so wrong. Remember, for instance, when everyone was predicting that the dead cert increased majority for Theresa May would lead to the creation of a new party? Perhaps, like everyone else who has since gone on to predict another series of impossible things with equal confidence, it’s easier for us to forget those old certainties. No one talks about a new party any more. The facts have changed, so we’ve changed our minds too.

There aren’t the same conditions for that proposed new party about which Tony Blair and other grandees kept dropping loud, clanging hints. Labour hasn’t been annihilated, or indeed particularly humiliated. Anyone talking openly about setting up such a party looks stuck in the past — even if that past was only really a couple of months ago.