Better If They Had Lost

So huge is the parliamentary support for Theresa May that some of her supporters are being whipped to vote for Andrea Leadsom in order to keep Michael Gove off the ballot paper that is to be sent out to all Conservative Party members.

He's toast.

Elsewhere, UKIP is on the cusp of expelling its one and only MP.

The momentum, so to speak, of the Leave campaign is swelling the ranks of the Labour Party in order to defend Jeremy Corbyn from the kind of people who voted Remain.

But the referendum result has destroyed Boris Johnson, the Conservative Right, and UKIP. They would have done better if they had lost.

Meanwhile, Article 50 remains uninvoked. And would remain so even under Gove.

A General Election this year would result in a hung Parliament, putting the greatly increased Lib Dems back into office.

That would mean no invocation of Article 50, and the matter only ever raised to loud groaning by a handful of MPs.

Or else it would mean a best-of-three situation in which the apparently inconclusive popular will would be tested one last time by the second referendum for which we are obviously being softened up.