Leadership contenders are still obsessed with appealing to the centre – but politics has changed

Nothing to see here: risibly, that remains how many senior Tories view the remarkable rise of the Brexit Party. To them, Nigel Farage’s return is a spectacular but ultimately meaningless final act, a last howl of rage by an angry minority exercising its right to protest at an irrelevant election. But a real, serious, game-changing threat to the political duopoly that has governed the UK for so long? Don’t be ridiculous.

There is something in the Conservative psyche that breeds this kind of deranged complacency: the conceit that theirs is the “natural party of government” is especially toxic. Many of the candidates for the party leadership, and not just the Remainers, genuinely believe that the ongoing political earthquake is in fact nothing more than a minor tremor.

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To these establishment types, Brexit voters will come flocking back to ensure that Jeremy Corbyn isn’t elected, and everything will return to normal. It will be a hairy few months, thanks to Theresa May’s staggering incompetence, but the ancien regime will reassert itself. Why? Because this is Britain, and this is how we do things. Delusion has long been the default position of politicians facing an outcome too bleak to consider: most would find it impossible to continue if they didn’t lie to themselves at least some of the time.