Meanwhile, even if you were actually "Right" - and Hitchens is about as consistently close as anyone could be - you would not want to be called that. The Right ceded this itself. Among what used to be the Right nobody now publicly refers to itself or any reputable party as anything further than "centre-Right". As long as you throw "centre" in you're just about all right. But forget to include it and you might as well have confessed to abducting little girls from holiday resorts.

What this lexicon has no way of denoting is the increasing number of us who now lie across rather than down those old political tracks. It has, for instance, no satisfactory way of describing those of us who are happy with the success of most 1960s' rights achievements but believe such rights should be defended and even fought for at home and abroad by a state which restricts immigration while interfering in our life and pocket as little as possible.

These issues of nomenclature now matter very much indeed. While the axis of our lives and politics is about to change drastically, they keep us stuck in an irrelevant mindset. Sticking to the old terms not only prevents us from having the "debate" that politicians always call for in lieu of action. It actively prevents us from arriving at ideas for ways out. It is like being forced on to the pitch to do your best with a hockey stick only to discover that the game being played is tennis. Faced with an economic situation far worse than most of our politicians can admit, and with security and sovereignty challenges beyond any government, we are again in need of a leader.

The last time Britain needed turning around, cameth the lady. But partly thanks to the lost culture wars over the Thatcher legacy, our politics today is split by factionalism both bitter and obsolete. Perhaps it is so bitter because it is so obsolete. We discuss realities in a language of defunct tribalism. While this continues, it precludes the emergence of any figure who could redraw the political map. We've been in tighter corners in our history. But I can't think of a time when the way out has been quite so hard to discern.