We Are The Masters Now

The United Kingdom has not withdrawn from the European Union, nor served any notice of intent to do so. Nor has David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister.

The first will not begin to happen until the second has already happened. That will not be until some time in the autumn.

The more days that pass without an Article 50 notification, the less likely it becomes.

There are lots of days between now and the arrival in Downing Street, either of a Prime Minister who openly did not want a Leave vote, or of a Prime Minister who only pretended to want it in order to become Prime Minister.

The question is which of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove is Vladimir, and which is Estragon.

There is no way that EU citizens already living here are going to made subject to visas, or deprived of the right to vote in local elections, or anything like that, any more than Irish citizens were when the Free State became the Republic.

And for the same reason: there are simply too many of them, and since they have already arrived here without any such restriction, the enforcement of it now would be absolutely impossible.

If people from Rwanda or Mozambique, neither of which was ever part of the British Empire, can stand in British elections all the way up to parliamentary level, then why stop people from France or Germany from standing for the council?

Correspondingly, there is no way that British citizens are going to lose EU citizenship unless they specifically renounce it, something that hardly anyone would ever go to the trouble of doing.

The very large Remain minority, at least, is in a position comparable to that of white settlers or of transplanted Asians when certain African and Caribbean countries became independent of Britain.

Except that the descendants of everyone in the United Kingdom who is currently a European Union citizen will be European Union citizens forever. Just wait and see. It will all be written in. If anything is ever written at all.

This country will either never leave the European Union, which is daily a greater likelihood, or will do so on such terms that hardly anyone will be able to tell the difference.

But that is not the point.

The point is that the political centre of gravity has shifted to Wales, the North and the Midlands, and especially to those sections of their populations which traditionally vote Labour.

Such are the voters to whose satisfaction the big questions now have to be answered. By no means only immigration, of which there is barely any in, for example, the North East. But everything.

A good place to start would be in organising local candidates against those pro-Remain MPs for areas that had voted Leave but who themselves supported Monday's vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn.

If you don't know, then guess. Frankly, it is likely to be all of them unless we are specifically told otherwise.

You can use the name of a registered political party, or the single word "Independent", or no description. I recommend using no description.

I am already standing for the new seat of Consett and Barnard Castle, where the Labour candidate is highly likely to be Pat Glass herself. She is a friend of mine, but this is politics. Please note the PayPal button on this site.

In the meantime, there is going to be a by-election at Batley and Spen. Someone there needs to get busy.