Do you remember the joy in 2017 when Jeremy Corbyn won a stunning election victory? This was just a year after the divisive referendum had been settled and Remain triumphed? Perhaps you don’t, but believe me, there is a corner of social media, and indeed the Labour Party, where these things happened.

It is entirely inconvenient to ever remind people that actually Corbyn lost the 2017 general election, and sustained even greater losses in 2019. It is equally annoying to tell these folk that Leave won the EU referendum, that Brexit happened and that, no, we probably aren’t going to reverse that in the foreseeable future

Reality may be a constant disappointment for the Labour Party, but this inability to move on will keep it out of power, however dismally this government is doing. It is not exactly Corbyn’s fault that the entire future of socialism was projected on to one stubborn old man, but it is his fault that he came to believe the hype.

Part of the hype was the ‘right side of history’ argument. He had always been on it; he had never been wrong. Perhaps this is why, like Boris Johnson, he can never actually apologise. That is why, in 2020, the whip was withdrawn from him by Sir Keir Starmer: Corbyn would not apologise for saying that the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report into anti-Semitism in his Labour Party “had been dramatically overstated for political reasons”. Starmer, referred to by Corbyn’s supporters as “Keith”, just as Blair is always “Bliar” (eat your heart out, Oscar Wilde), would not back down. Corbyn now sits as an independent MP.

Now, in Islington North, there are moves to deselect him. There has been some talk (from his wife and others) of him forming his own political party. There is no doubt that is he a good and popular constituency MP. But his presence – neither inside, nor outside Labour – is a problem. The union Unite backs him, and could withdraw its significant funding to the Labour Party if he were deselected. Who would want to stand against him? Would his local party branch even go along with this?

All of this is a nightmare, but one that has a very simple solution. This man is 72, and will be 74 at the time of the next election. Corbyn could as most people do and retire. Is he in denial? I wondered that when he appeared in the House of Commons at the beginning of the pandemic, a time when his age group was told to be particularly careful. What made him think himself invincible – vegetarianism?

His supporters, often young and idealistic, saw in him a moral purity and refusal to compromise, whereas I only ever saw a stubborn arrogance and creeping narcissism. Sure, he energised the Labour Party, and there were many good things in his manifestos – but he always embodied a fossilised version of socialism that simply does not speak to most people’s everyday lives.

Even now, he sees the Ukraine crisis as primarily the fault of Nato. His comrades-in-arms see the destabilisation in that region coming from the expansion of Nato. Are these people serious? I am afraid they are, and their proud, anti-imperialist stance does not even speak to the current situation. At all.