It is an anxious time for the former Labour Party voter, watching a once-great movement fall to squabbles that will not move an electorate. Irresponsible Tories mock Labour’s anguish, but an effective opposition is necessary. Without it, Britain is essentially a one-party state. What fool wants that?

Labour is 120 this week and Tony Blair, the saviour they loathe – the only living Labour leader to win an election – rose to plead with his party not to occupy a country of its own imaginings, but to deal with the Britain that is. Can we ask any less of politicians, who are not allowed the emotional freedom of novelists, and should not seek it?

No one is more dangerous than a failed artist and Corbyn always struck me more as an artist painting a utopia than a politician. He seemed to yearn for failure. And how he hated those who will not be complicit in his fantasies. Hatred is not an effective political weapon but, despite this – or possibly because of it – many people were hated out of the Labour Party.

Labour’s potential supporters deserve better but sometimes I think we are, to much of the Labour leadership, either something to be despised or something they have invented, a foil to their own personal fantasies of renewal.

They talk about Socialism. I do not know if they mean it, or if it another castle on a cloud – and if they don’t mean it, it is mad to say it – but it is anathema to the electorate. Is Socialism possible in the United Kingdom, a constitutional monarchy? I can imagine social democracy thriving, and progressive taxation gaining majority support – but Socialism?