And while we’re on the topic of the opposition, the situation is no rosier with them. I’m hesitant to say it’s actively worse, but only because I find that hard to imagine. However…

Ken Livingstone. Some people love him. Other people don’t love him. His time as mayor of London was mostly carried by blatant “London First” pandering and maintaining a Galloway-lite “quirky outsider” chic. And like Gormless George, he has a penchant for befriending dictators and regularly engaging in Antisemantism.*

So here’s a lesson in politics: act like someone’s weird but charismatic uncle and no-one will raise questions about you being mates with Hugo Chavez.

But without the sheen of populist support, Livingstone doesn’t fare so well. He’s certainly less odious than Galloway, but then so is everyone. That doesn’t excuse his schmoozing with dictators. The offhand racism and infantile word games that follow are fuelled by the same underlying need: narcissistic supply. He wants to be a champion of the left. The left wants a champion. So whatever offensive nonsense parped out of his face, a blind eye was turned.

But that’s just Ken. Nothing I say will change the mind of his fan-base, nor harden the resolve of his critics. The point is, he’s now quite clearly a political liability, stuck in a different era, unable to connect what he says to the world around him. Sound familiar? So the sensible thing would be to jettison him into the credibility-vacuum of space.

Yet this is a man that the Labour Party refuses to expel. He’s a holy relic, one of the few to have been genuinely popular and held significant elected office. They’ll censure him for his stupid attention-seeking soundbites, but they won’t get rid of him. It’d be like the Vatican getting rid of the Turin Shroud. Anyone with more than half a brain knows it’s an obvious fraud, but the church can’t let it go. It’s the best substitute they have for real evidence. It helps sustain the pretence their beliefs haven’t been trodden into the ground by the march of history.

So if willy-waving the Royal Navy at Spaniards tells you all you need to know about the Tories, Ken’s stay of execution should do the same for Labour. Corbyn harks back to when the left had something definite to rally behind. Something easy to articulate. Livingstone is a reminder that votes are there to be won if it can then be so articulated.

I can only assume that the natural progression of this is He Who Must Not Be Named shall be brought back in from the cold. This would be tantamount to the Labour party not only digging its own grave, but then dancing on it. What they really need to do is strip themselves of this nostalgic baggage.

Unless they stop living victories past, stop fighting battles long won – or lost – and start dealing with how the world is now, they will become increasingly irrelevant. Allowing that to happen will cement the shift of the political centre. That’s currently somewhere in the middle-right of the Tory frontbench and drifting further rightward.

So time to grow a spine, disown the likes of Red Ken, and redefine left-wing politics in a way that’s both morally coherent and relevant to the modern world. Over to you, Tom Watson.

*noun. – being openly antisemitic but then playing silly semantic games when people call you out for being a horrible bigot