Grooms of the Chamber

The elimination of Jeremy Hunt would have handed power to his 18 voters, only three fewer than the gap between Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt. If this had been a real contest.

Sunak has been groomed as his generation's voice of the haute bourgeoisie since they put him on television as little more than the schoolboy that he must have been when they had decided to feature him. His campaign launch yesterday was a grandees' big day out.

If Sunak topped the poll again tomorrow, then expect a "foiled bomb plot" or something to emphasise the need for "stability" and thus to ensure his coronation. When Boris Johnson said today that his successor might be elected by acclamation, then he could have had only one possible candidate in mind.

Anyone who cheered on, never mind joined in, the vilification of Jeremy Corbyn cannot complain about any of this. The vocabulary is already the same. The Johnson years were "a shameful interlude", and what have you. Boris Johnson has already joined Corbyn as a folk demon the mere mention of whose name closes the debate. Johnson has been declared The Worst Prime Minister Ever even though I for one am not aware that he has ever started a war.

Last night, the Labour Party in the House of Lords abstained so as to defeat an amendment to give free school meals to all children of Universal Credit claimants, half of whom are in work if that matters for this purpose. To have supported it would have been "Corbynite". This has been par for the course ever since the last General Election. Now watch out for all the things that are going to be "Johnsonite". Everyone is too polite to mention that while Keir Starmer did indeed sit in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, a Shadow Cabinet was all that it ever was.

Meanwhile, although there will no doubt be brief Premierships of other people, to be treated as embarrassments without analysis ever thereafter in the manner of Gordon Brown's and Theresa May's, the office of Prime Minister will almost always be held by a carefully safeguarded succession of Tony Blairs, David Camerons and Rishi Sunaks. If everything had gone according to plan, then Cameron would have handed over to Sunak in the last couple of years.

Hey, ho. There will always be those whose weird hobby was that end in itself, the Labour Party. But we who instead actively sought to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, are getting on with our think tank, our weekly magazine of news and comment, our fortnightly satirical magazine, our monthly cultural review, our quarterly academic journal, our international book series, our Associateship programme, and our pursuit of direct representation for our people on public bodies and in the media, including the balance of power after the next two General Elections before winning a third outright.