It’s become well known that Labour’s solid lead in the opinion polls is down mainly to the backing of left-leaning former Liberal Democrats.

Who says? For that matter, who says that there are any such people as left-leaning Lib Dems?

Once upon a time, there was a party which believed in the Welfare State, workers’ rights, trade unionism, the co-operative movement and wider mutualism, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation rather than environmentalism, fair taxation, full employment, pragmatic public ownership, proper local government, and a powerful Parliament, and, at least as an ideal or an aspiration, a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State.

In the pursuit of those objectives, which successfully prevented a Marxist revolution here in one of the two countries that Marx thought most likely to have one, that party was able to accommodate an enormous diversity of perspectives: provincial and metropolitan, rural and urban, religious and secular, socially conservative and socially liberal, foreign policy realist and liberal interventionist, Eurosceptical and Eurofederalist, pro-Commonwealth and pro-American, monarchist and republican, staunchly Unionist and variously separatist-inclined.

Those whose priorities were agriculture, manufacturing and retail, the means of production and distribution, made common cause with those whose priorities were the services sector in general and the financial services sector in particular, the means of exchange. There were people who cherished the United Kingdom’s very considerable and longstanding ties to the Arab world, the memory of the British fallen to terrorist attacks in Palestine, and the Catholic and Orthodox witness of the Arab Christians, including their foundation of Arab nationalism at American Protestant missionary universities. Alongside those worked people who cherished the political project that was like them: staunchly secular and liberal, economically leftish or extremely left-wing, and Ashkenazi Jewish to the core.

That party went into abeyance after the death of John Smith. But it is now back under Ed Miliband, accordingly far ahead in the polls on a permanent basis, and winning local council seats even in Southern villages that it had not contested in 30 years or more.

Only one party now advocates the Union as a first principle, and any concept of English identity. A universal postal service bound up with the monarchy. The Queen’s Highways, rather than toll roads owned by faraway and unstable petrostates. Her Majesty’s Constabulary, rather than the British KGB that is the impending “National Crime Agency”. Its own 1997 manifesto commitment to renationalise the railways. The National Health Service, rather than piecemeal privatised provision by the American healthcare companies that pay key Coalition figures and fund their parties. Keeping Sunday at least as special as the last Conservative Government left it.

The restoration both of energy independence and of the economic basis of paternal authority, through the reopening of the mines promised by Ed Miliband to one hundred thousand people at the Durham Miners’ Gala. The historic regimental system, and aircraft carriers with aircraft on them. No Falkland Islands oil to Argentina. The State action necessary in order to maintain the work of charities and of churches. The State action necessary in order to maintain a large and thriving middle class. A referendum on continued membership of the EU, explicitly and repeatedly ruled out by David Cameron and William Hague, but never by Ed Miliband. A free vote on the redefinition of marriage, very recently and half-heartedly conceded to Conservative MPs, but always guaranteed to Labour ones, whatever a London-only newspaper effectively run out of Boris Johnson’s office might pretend.

Labour is reverting to its historical norm as the voice and vehicle of a many-rooted social democratic patriotism in all directions, inclusive of social and cultural conservatives as well as social and cultural liberals, inclusive of rural as well as urban and suburban voices, inclusive of provincial as well as metropolitan contributions, and inclusive of religious as well as secular insights. The 2010 intake is very largely “classic Labour”, the boys in their dads’ suits having decided to sit out the hard work of Opposition. As a result, Labour has long enjoyed a commanding lead both in the opinion polls and at the actual polls.