Yet Ukip’s results in the 2014 local and European elections demonstrate the importance of blue-collar voters for Labour. These are the voters it has been haemorrhaging for over a decade; those who once sat at home on election day and are now coming out to vote Ukip………….This is a logical consequence of abandoning blue-collar Britons and becoming a party of the urban middle class alone.

Wow…..you mean winning Hackney with a coalition of young white middle class professionals and ethnic minorities won’t make much of an impression on those working class people in Rotherham and Thurrock? You know, the ones who never appear in colour supplements?

As John Denham, MP for Southampton Itchen, has observed, we need to recognise the pressures immigration has put on some working-class communities

But…but…but…I thought uncontrolled immigration was A Good Thing….

Could that possibly be because it is the working class areas of the big cities and small market towns that that find their schools, social services and social housing overwhelmed by the influx of immigrants and never the comfortable middle class suburbs or cosy commuter villages wherein dwell the self perpetuating political, media and academic elite? An elite which constantly lauds the glories of “cultural diversity” and “community integration” while maintaining a convenient distance from the realities of their guilt induced dreamworld.

One reason why the left elite hated Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher so much is that they connected with vast swathes of working class opinion and were not afraid of courting the disdain of that elite – unlike the current Tory leadership which deliberately jettisoned that legacy and paid the price with their failure to win unadulterated power in 2010.

Until the Tories have the courage to cease yearning for the approval of the BBC/Guardian chattering classes they might find themselves withering on the political vine and possibly being edged out by alternatives – UKIP, anyone?

The times they are a changing…..