At The End of The Day

There is no reason for the Conservative Party to celebrate: its only figure capable of winning anything is now trapped in the silly non-job of Mayor of London (a metropolis run by central government quangos and the Borough Councils) until a whole year after the next General Election. And even Boris Johnson is going to have his life made a misery by a Labour Assembly.

Ken Livingstone is one of the great long-term winners of British politics. Mayor of London or not, the two flagship pieces of legislation in next week's Queen's Speech will be measures that were "Loony Left" 30 years ago, namely the abolition of  the House of Lords and the redefinition of legal marriage to include same-sex couples.

The first was most associated with Tony Benn, but the second was most associated with Livingstone. Both are now the policy of the successor to the SDP. Both are now the policy of the Conservative Party. The only party that remains less than convinced is Livingstone's own. The third leg of the stool, bringing the IRA into the government of Northern Ireland, was accepted in principle by all three parties all the way back when John Major was Prime Minister.

Labour's retention of overall control of Glasgow is a significant humiliation of the SNP. It ought not to be. By any objective measurement, the Nationalists won these elections in Scotland. But that was the ground on which they chose to judge the winner. And on that ground, they have lost.  Their failure to make anything like their predicted progress is more than a portent of the independence referendum. Alex Salmond increasingly resembles a Shakespearean character who almost has it all but who, in the doomed pursuit of that one last thing, brings it all crashing down around him, ultimately leading to his own destruction.

And while there is still a lot in the tricolour theory of British politics, Labour's more than survival in Scotland and its considerable improvement even on an existing position of strength in Wales, together with its significant gains in the South, mean that there is at least as much truth in the view that Labour is now the One Nation party, holding out against divisive and doctrinaire dangers from Scottish independence to Post Office privatisation, deregulated Sunday trading, toll roads owned by foreign states, the abolition of national pay agreements, and the flogging off of our NHS piece by piece.

That such a party retains its greatest strength in the North of England is only to be expected, since that is where the consciousness of such a sensibility is most developed. But conscious or otherwise, articulate or otherwise, at least as yet, that sensibility exists in every part of the Kingdom. It is the mainstream. It is the majority. It is the norm. It is, if you will, the centre ground. It is going to carry Ed Miliband into Downing Street. But once he gets there, his Government and our country would benefit enormously from a body of MPs drawn from every corner of the Realm and elected specifically in order to keep him mindful of the mainstream, moderate majority.