Sadly for Labour, most of its really intelligent MPs – those who know how to get people elected, and who are routinely dismissed as “Blairites” because of their belief in sensible economics – are horrified by Mr Smith, whose policies would bankrupt Britain.

I imagine such people as Tristram Hunt, Liz Kendall, Alan Johnson and Stella Creasy will seek to take an initiative to form a new party once Mr Corbyn is re-elected, and will set about persuading all but a few dozen of their fellow MPs to join them. The alternative is oblivion.

Sturgeon’s fishy antics found out

I’m immensely grateful to the huge number of Scottish readers who wrote to me after my remarks on Nicola Sturgeon and the fantasists of the SNP last week. With the SNP defeated on Thursday in its attempts to snoop on family life (I didn’t call them Bolsheviks without reason), its pretensions to be a serious party are crumbling. Opponents have a resurgent Tory party to articulate their anger and frustrations, and the support of millions of English who watch Ms Sturgeon’s antics with a mixture of horror and pity. She will get what is coming to her in the end.