Check

Ever so quietly, even the BBC has admitted the truth about Ghouta. Ask the New Party about that. Or about Tony Blair.

In fact, if this whole thing were not a confection of the media, then the founding press conference would end, and the project with it, when a journalist asked about the Iraq War. Thereby exposing the last people, possibly in the world, who still thought that it had been a good idea.

More broadly, like Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, and most of the MPs who joined the SDP, this rabble is poised to leave a party that it had scarcely joined, no matter how long certain membership cards had been held.

Little or no background either in the trade unions or in Labour local government? Check. Never lived in or near their constituencies before being selected, and barely done so since? Check. Independent means, or the reasonable expectation of a higher income outside Parliament than in it? Check.

And at least the SDP expected that income to come from business. No business would employ this lot. That is why, for all their talk of the private sector, they are complete strangers to it. No, they would be guaranteed gargantuan salaries and pensions by think tanks and other registered charities that were in turn dependent on public funding. Do not take my word for that. Check.