Unite, Indeed

They don't learn.

Few people remember whom Jeremy Corbyn beat hands down last year.

And no one will remember whom Len McCluskey had beaten hands down this year.

The Blairite Right does have a nerve, trying to present its man as the candidate of immigration restriction.

But that could be strategic.

He is not going to win, or come anywhere close.

UKIP is going to crash and burn at solidly Leave-voting Copeland against Labour.

Or possibly against the Conservatives. Their Leader, the Prime Minister, pretty much declared for Remain or Bust yesterday, but hardly anyone even noticed. The reaction, if any, has been that, "We knew that already."

UKIP is going to crash and burn again, this time certainly against Labour, at even more solidly Leave-voting Leigh.

And then it will be high time to stop pretending that "traditional Labour voters" were exercised much at all by immigration.

The areas with the most immigration voted Remain.

The Leave heartlands of Wales and the North have little or no immigration, to match their few or no non-Labour MPs.

There is a threat to a major party from a party that has at least come to define itself on the EU issue.

It is the threat, which has already been carried out once, from the Lib Dems to the Conservatives across the Remain heartlands of the South.

As is also evident from local by-elections, the Lib Dems are on a roll.

But as is also evident from local by-elections, UKIP is finished, and with it probably the issue of immigration for two generations.

If that is a bad thing, then it is the fault of UKIP, more or less for existing at all.

The one man who would be in a position to reframe the debate in terms that were not toxic to most voters would be the triumphant Len McCluskey.

Far from being electoral catnip, Nigel Farage has failed to be elected to the House of Commons on no fewer than seven occasions.

Neither he nor his party was permitted any role whatever in the official Leave campaign, which duly won.

At Leigh, the UKIP candidate will either have been Paul Nuttall, defeated right there in the urban North West, or not Paul Nuttall, unwilling to be defeated right there in the urban North West.

Either way, it will be time for UKIP to be quietly dissolved.