For years, elections in Britain were won and lost “in the center.” In that piddling, middling ground, the parties converged.

The center ground has collapsed, and it began long before Jeremy Corbyn, or Brexit. In spring 2010, amid global turmoil, it looked unassailable. The elections had been dominated by three centrist parties, and the most piddling, middling of them all had briefly been the darlings of the campaign: the Liberal Democrats.

But polarization was, indeed, coming — the neoliberal, post-Cold War center ground which had been expanding for the last two decades, was about to shrink. And that process would begin with the demolition of the Liberals, starting with when David Cameron and Nick Clegg staged their nuptials in the Westminster rose garden.