Corbyn’s election sets up a real-world challenge to a central belief of Australian Labor’s political class – that shifting to the left will not win elections. This betrays a two-dimensional sort of thinking that belongs to the analogue age: we only have to move the marker rightwards until we reach the magical point of electability. The social base, which made this sort of strategy a viable way of winning in the 1980s and 1990s, has changed. Trying to win more elections on this basis is most certainly madness.

How long can these people really hold off, before things become not just ugly but violent? Where do the Joneses and Brands go now that their hope for the reconsolidation of power has failed?