A red glow spreading across the land may be so bright you could see it from space, if polling predictions are right. In that Labour flare, let’s pinpoint one astonishing constituency the party looks likely to win for the first time in history. Conservative for ever, the City itself, part of the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, would be turning red. Look at the symbolism.

The king in Buckingham Palace would have a Labour MP for the first time. So would the Palace of Westminster, the supreme court, the Old Bailey, Scotland Yard, Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, Catholic Westminster Cathedral and Methodist Central Hall.

The headquarters of God, mammon and Beelzebub are here, with Soho, Leicester Square, Piccadilly, strip clubs and most of theatreland. Three sides of the Monopoly board fall within this constituency, from Pall Mall and Vine Street round to Mayfair and Park Lane.

Here are the grandest old-world clubs: the Savile, White’s, the Garrick and even that Tory domain the Carlton, plus the celebs of Soho House, 5 Hertford Street and Annabel’s. Along with Claridge’s, the Savoy and Fortnum and Mason, there’s Oxford Street, galleries from the National to Tate Britain and the Duke of Wellington’s Apsley House. Imagine a Labour MP representing all this for the first time.

What’s going on here is professionals turning to Labour in upmarket streets presumed Tory for ever, barely canvassed before. Brexit broke the back of their support, just as it broke the Tory party itself as Ukip and its values morphed from outsider “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists” to infiltrate the core membership. Finance and business still wrestle with its damage.

But something........

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