Are we living through the most heavily freighted general election of modern times? Brexit alone would make it so. But merely to list some of the other questions in play tells a significant story.

In the United Kingdom we are deeply familiar with Left/Right politics. It is the great staple of our national debate and routinely freckled with matters of class, status, life chances and equality that accompany it. But the chasm between the Corbyn and the Johnson models of political economy is truly vast. The familiar voters’ refrain that “they are all the same” will not resonate this time.

However the centrifugal effect of the European question is so powerful that the traditional Left/Right party structure is cracking under the stress testing. Big figures from the past such as Tony Blair and Michael Heseltine plainly cannot bear what their parties have become.