One of the most significant weeks in British politics for a very long time

We have just lived through one of the most significant weeks in British politics for a very long time.

Look at the list of Honorary Associates of the National Secular Society. It is clearly the most establishmentarian organisation in the English-speaking world. And that is quite a feat. No doubt it is therefore also one of the richest voluntary bodies in Britain. Again, that is no mean achievement. Meanwhile, we all know about the BBC.

Such people look at the Catholic school system and see their own worst nightmare. Catholic congregations are now replete with first and second-generation university graduates whose parents have never paid a school fee in their lives. What is more, the Catholic community is concentrated in Scotland, the North, the Midlands, and the working-class parts of London.

Yet from such redoubts, previously treated as if they were on the moon by Everyone Who Matters, these jumped-up oiks have now had the audacity to exercise political influence. And they have done so precisely to defend the very institutions that produced them in the first place. Yet, on top of everything else, those institutions have a higher than average ethnic mix, and a long history both of educating and of employing people with Irish surnames.

Where will it all end?

Well, for one thing, the penny might drop that General Elections are not won and lost in the South East. If they were, then there would now be a Tory Government with a large majority. The Tories first nearly and then actually lost office by losing first many and then most of their seats in Scotland, Wales, the North and the Midlands. Their failure to recapture those seats has been their failure to recapture office. Meanwhile, they took back in 2005 most of their 1997 losses in the South East. But so what?

Oh, things are certainly not as they were even only a fortnight ago...