Manners May-kyth

Whining in Private Eye from "Labour insiders" that the uncompromisingly anti-EU Seumas Milne has been accompanying Jeremy Corbyn to meetings with Theresa May. Len McCluskey has presumably been accompanied by Milne's fellow Hard Lexiteer, Andrew Murray.

So Corbyn and Milne, McCluskey and presumably Murray are allowed in, without the need for babysitters. But the Conservative Right and "Labour insiders" are permitted in the Prime Ministerial presence only if accompanied by responsible adults, or at any rate by anti-Brexit Conservative MPs.

If Mrs May did come up with much of a Brexit plan, then it would have to be acceptable to Seumas Milne, while the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg could just get lost. As could the "Labour insiders". Inside what, exactly, these days?

You see, if the "Labour insiders" did set up their own party, then, while it would do creditably well in a very few places, it would not be the First Past the Post in any of them. And Jeremy Corbyn knows it. 

While if the Conservative Right did have a second go in recent years at setting up its own party (and the last one received saturation coverage for the better part of a decade before it crashed and burned), then this country has changed so much in such a short time that that party would lose its deposit in every constituency.

There is nowhere where it would now take one in 20 votes cast. And Theresa May knows it. She knows that she can pay less attention to its potential members than she pays to Len McCluskey and to Jeremy Corbyn, presumably to Andrew Murray and certainly to Seumas Milne.