We’ve been here before.

Yesterday, a group of moderate Labour MPs resigned from the party to form a new Independent group, with a view to forming a new political party by the end of the year. All very similar to 1981 when Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers quit Labour to form the SDP. Then as now, Labour had lurched to the left, which seemed to make them even less appealing than a deeply unpopular Tory government. Labour leader Michael Foot was never regarded as Prime Minister material any more than Jeremy Corbyn is today. All that happened is that the SDP split the Labour vote and the Tories remained in power for a generation. I suspect the same will happen again. The new Independents missed a trick yesterday. If they’d just launched with a version of this, then millions of people, including me, would have voted for them.