It Seems To Be Working

If most people, including most Leave voters, never heard the word "Brexit" again, then it would be too soon.

 

A high proportion of those who voted in the referendum did not, do not, and will not vote in elections, including yesterday's elections.

 

The Right died last night.

 

Copeland ended any possibility of a challenge to Theresa May, or even of a critique of her, from that wing of her own party, in which she now has a completely free hand.

 

Meanwhile, Stoke Central ended UKIP altogether.

 

Based on May's staggeringly left-wing domestic programme, the centre is now whatever Jeremy Corbyn happens to say.

 

Just so long as she still gets to be rude about him personally while reading out the policies that two years ago were peculiar to him and to John McDonnell.

 

The death of UKIP means that there is no one to object to that from the Right.

 

Her reading out of Corbynism in the style of Margot Leadbetter is now as far right as British politics goes.

 

She has entirely accepted Corbyn's terms of debate.

 

And the capture of Copeland (hardly Bolsover, but even so) cannot be seen as anything other than a vindication of that acceptance.

 

That is what Britain now is.

 

A country in which the Christian Democratic Left seeks to enact as much as possible of the Social Democratic Left's programme while holding it up as a bogeyman for electoral purposes.

 

It seems to be working.