This is not so much a realignment in British politics as the corrosion of the old alignments, the scrubbing out of the old dividing lines. May is making hay out of Labour's demise, and her decision to champion Brexit - to attach herself, albeit opportunistically, to the democratic cry of the 17.4million - has boosted her stock. But the technocratic May is still living on borrowed time, time that is being extended by a weak and conflicted opposition that lacks the courage to neither thwart nor champion Brexit. A Tory landslide in June will mark both an extension of the public's determination for Brexit, and a recognition of Labour's disarray - not a rejuvenation of Toryism.

For most of modern British political history these two totemic parties have defined themselves against one another, even when the rush for the technocratic centre made this feel increasingly meaningless and pantomimic. For this reason, the collapse of Corbyn's Labour poses a less immediate but nevertheless existential threat to the Tories. For as long as May can pose as the custodian of the Brexit spirit, and as long as there is no real electoral challenge, the party will continue to pick up support. But it can't last. Beyond Brexit, and beyond Labour, what the Tory Party will stand for, will give expression to, is far from clear.

In this election, in Wales and the north of England, Brexit will be the wheel upon which Labour will be broken. But the Brexit vote has sped up the unravelling not just of Corbyn's Labour, but of the old politics itself. It's not a question of if but when. The class divide, and the parties that once embodied it, has ceased to mean anything. The referendum, that glorious exercise in mass democracy, revealed not a split between rich and poor, but a split between the technocracy-loving elite and the freedom-thirsting demos. We need a new politics to harness that, to give life to the new divide and bring an end to the lifeless parties of old.