Cable and Wireless

The Conservative Party has won an overall majority at only one of the last six General Elections. Yet its only ideology remains as it has always been, that it is the natural party of government. It will bear any burden and pay any price in order to fulfil that Manifest Destiny. Knowing that, Lloyd George insisted on being Prime Minister, Nick Clegg could have insisted on being Prime Minister, and Vince Cable would insist on being Prime Minister.

Like any compromise on the pubic sector pay cap, any compromise on undergraduate tuition fees would effectively negate this year's General Election. In that case, Labour might as well have won. Yet that latter, at least, really does seem to be coming. It seems to have become a matter of consensus that fees are at best an unfortunate necessity, and that in principle undergraduate tuition ought to be free at the point of delivery.

(Personally, I think that we either fund the whole of higher education like that, all the way up to doctoral level, or we charge fees, even if they are deferred, at every stage of the process. I also contend that whatever was enjoyed by students ought also to be enjoyed by apprentices and trainees, and vice versa.)

The only people holding out are the Lib Dems. Truly, they are the party of "the Centre". And they have the electoral record to show for it. This year, every constituency in Great Britain had the option of voting, both for "the Centre" that was and is supposed to be so popular, and for the "populist" Right. "The Centre" did pretty badly, and the "populist" Right was so unpopular that it was wiped off the map. 

Adopting aspects of UKIP's programme cost the Conservatives their overall majority; Theresa May's original Corbynised Milibandism would probably have saved it. While discarding numerous features that had been shared with the Lib Dems gave Labour its biggest favourable swing since 1945. Between them, the allegedly unappetising parties, for alternatives to which the electorate was said to be crying out, won 82.3 per cent of the vote.

Yet the losers continue to dominate the commentariat, which is a duopoly between "the Centre" and the "populist" Right. Not between the Lib Dems and UKIP; indeed, the absence of Lib Dem commentators, as such, has long been striking, and it was especially so during that party's five years in the Cabinet. But nevertheless between their two sets of views.

Bitter old Blairites and Cameroons are never out of the papers, and thus never off the airwaves. The Evening Standard is even edited by George Osborne. But other than perhaps Giles Fraser, there is no one writing regularly for any sold-in-shops, Parliamentary Press Gallery newspaper other than the Morning Star who is as far to the Left as 30 or more people writing regularly for such newspapers are to the Right, with all that that then entails for the composition of every panel that is ever put together by any broadcaster other than RT.

For whom are they speaking? For whom are they not speaking? For whom is no one speaking? For a start, no one is speaking for the 12,877,869 people who voted for the Labour Party that was led by Jeremy Corbyn.