Rewind: We're about to witness the first "extremely online" Tory opposition

The Conservative Party is staring down a dark path, and last weekend felt like a preview of the grim future ahead.

Lee Anderson , the hard-of-thinking provocateur, lost the party whip after refusing to apologise for claiming that “ Islamists ” had “got control” of Sadiq Khan , the Mayor of London .

Former Lib Dem/Remainer Liz Truss continued on her radicalisation speed-run.

This means that in a leadership election after a defeat, not only will any arguments predicated on electability’ feel discredited but the winner will be disproportionately decided by the hard-nosed ideologues who managed to hold on to their safe seats and have not personally experienced the pain of defeat.

So given all of this, and the expected Tory wipeout next time around, I think a baseline expectation is that the Conservative party after defeat is going to look a lot more like Suella Braverman than Rory Stewart .

We're going to have to get used to the fact that we’re all extremely online now.

The long tails on both left and right are inevitably going to be fatter as people on the fringes can find each other and work together to promote their ideas.

No wonder we see conspiracy theorists claim that Islamists are somehow controlling the Mayor of London , and the absolute worst people have a platform to argue that Tommy Robinson is a hero.