This is not a happy time to be on the one-nation wing of the Conservative party. The final round of last year’s leadership election was between two candidates from the right of the party, and since then it has been Robert Jenrick, the more rightwing of the two, who has emerged as the party’s centre of gravity – a remarkable feat for a man who lost the race.

His recently reported comments about a coalition with Reform UK (or perhaps, as sources close to him insist, its voters) have put the question of the Tories’ future direction back in the spotlight. Is Nigel Farage the herald of a fundamental rightward shift? Is this, as one fellow journalist put it to me, “the final death of one-nation Toryism”?

The short answer is “probably not” – at least not unless the Tory party dies its own final death. The “one nation” label dates back to Benjamin Disraeli; it survived the reactionary hegemony of Lord Salisbury and the revolutionary one of Margaret Thatcher. So long as there is a Tory party, it will have a left wing and, historical labels being what they are, it will probably call itself one nation.

Last year’s contest would also seem, on the surface at least, to provide that wing with some bullish indicators. Broadly speaking (for personal loyalties and ambitions confound precise readings from such tallies), James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat had the support of about half the parliamentary party. It took a real

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