Never forget that in the lead-up to the 2010 election, even before that strange, brief period when the saviour of British politics was Nick Clegg, there was another one, even stranger and briefer, when it was Esther Rantzen.

Maybe you’ve blanked it out. The expenses scandal had happened, and politicians were the enemy. And so, amid the dying gasps of the Gordon Brown government, the idea took hold that the answer was non-politicians. There was to be a new force, an army of independents, and Rantzen was to be their figurehead. And then she got 4.4 per cent of the vote in Luton South, and that was that.

Deciding that we need a new political force is the easiest, laziest thing in the world. Deciding