Make the most of living in Conservative Britain: Armageddon is upon us. In a little over a week, the Tory government – that last, oh-so-imperfect, infuriatingly porous roadblock to Left-wing hegemony – will have been obliterated. The removal vans, symbols of regime change, will be on their way. Parliament, the last major institution in Britain still nominally controlled by the centre-Right, will have fallen, in a wipeout without precedent. 

Sir Keir Starmer will be prime minister with a crushing majority. Even in the best-case scenario for the Conservatives, never before in British history will there have been so many MPs – mostly Labour, but also Lib Dem, Plaid Cymru, Green and the diminished SNP – dedicated to one or other form of socialism or social-democracy, and so few – Tory, Reform and DUP – interested in free markets, liberty, cultural conservatism, self-government or other strands of centre-Right thinking.

To add insult to injury, not every residual Tory MP will even fall into the latter category: plenty will be uber-wet, with little in common with the Conservative electorate of 2024. Nigel Farage’s likely election won’t make up for this calamity.

The comprehensive nature and historic scale of this apocalypse for the British centre-Right has yet to sink in. Even after the catastrophe of 1906, when the Tories collapsed to 156 seats (yes, those were the days), the victors were the old Liberals, who were far less statist than today’s Conservatives. Labour, led by another Keir, grabbed just 29 seats. The overwhelmingly Tory House of Lords, then imbued with real power, was neutered by the Parliament Act of 1911, but Starmer will go one further: he will stuff the Lords with an army of Labour peers. 

Above and beyond what will be the most hostile parliamentary arithmetic of the democratic era, there is another reason why the election of 2024 will amount to the worst ever defeat for the forces of conservatism. The Left’s unprecedented control over Parliament will be matched by its unparalleled grip over virtually every other powerful institution: the universities, cultural bodies, charities, the BBC and most of the broadcast media, the quangos, the economic and financial regulators, the Church, the police and now even big business and woke capital. 

Having long since captured the public sector, the Left’s Long Marchers turned their attention to the private sector, starting with HR departments. More so even than under Tony Blair, Labour will be able to count on the enthusiastic support of a mass of fellow travellers. The Tories, for all their faults, did sometimes restrain the Blob, and occasionally, such as on Brexit and aspects of gender ideology, actually defeated it. Under Labour, all parts of the establishment will share the same values and work towards the same goals, probably for the first time since the 1950s (though elite beliefs were very different in those days). 

Starmer will be the most powerful prime minister of modern times, at least until events begin to derail him: the master of all he surveys in Parliament, and ideologically aligned to the courts, the Blob and to woke capital, he will possess a near-monopoly on political and cultural power that Thatcher and Blair couldn’t have dreamt of. 

It is no surprise, therefore, that many on the Left are feeling over-excited: this may finally be their moment. David Tennant, the Dr Who actor, said he wished Kemi Badenoch didn’t “exist any more” and that she should “ shut up” because of her support for women’s rights. Tennant’s comments sum up the modern Left: hypocritical, intolerant of difference, extreme in support of their pet causes, and ecstatic at the prospect of total victory. 

For the activists who have worked so hard to get Labour elected, and for many of his new MPs, Starmer’s landslide will be seen as vindication of their ideas, the electorate’s final repudiation of conservatism and centre-Right values, and the green light for revolutionary change. They will downplay the real reason for Labour’s triumph, namely Middle England’s disgust at Tory broken promises and incompetence, and the debilitating split in the centre-Right vote.

Yet the Left-wing base’s apparent hubris comes from a realisation that it has a unique yet fleeting opportunity to remould Britain: Starmer’s honeymoon won’t last forever. He will never be as dominant as over the next few months: it will be the moment to cash in political capital and find a pretext to tear up the manifesto. 

Left-wing economists have spent years calling for wealth taxes, higher levies on capital gains, restrictions on Isas, and reforms to council tax that would hammer anybody living in an expensive home: this would be one way of financing a large spending increase. The Rejoiners will proclaim that the electorate is finally sick of Brexit. 

Others will argue that Labour should be explicitly pro-immigration, and stop pretending to care about stopping the boats. Woke activists are pushing critical race theory and decolonisation, wanting to go further even than Labour’s plans to impose yet more divisive red tape on business. Others want to reinject egalitarian and woke nostrums into the curriculum. The Israelophobes are desperate for Labour to turn its back on the Jewish state.

There are signs that Starmer understands the dangers of a drastic Left-wards tilt. He appears to realise that the public dislikes the Tories but doesn’t love Labour, and certainly not hard-Left ideas. He has made a nuanced case for the lack of dignity conferred by benefits. Wes Streeting sees the dangers of woke over-reach when it comes to female voters. But Parliament will become a giant, almost uniformly Left-wing echo chamber, emboldening the madder voices, and Starmer himself is a real man of the Left.

So who, in this brave new world, will speak up for conservative Britain? We must hope that Badenoch, as well as Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel and other strong figures are re-elected. Farage will be a pain in Starmer’s backside on immigration and the EU. Much of the opposition to hard-Left overreach will come from the moderate Left, not least J K Rowling, who has already called out Starmer over trans extremism. The centre-Right desperately needs its own extra-parliamentary voices.

Yet there can be no denying that the future looks desperately miserable for conservative voters. The past few years were just a dry run: the real nightmare is about to begin.