The Pontypridd MP’s leadership challenge is an act of defiance against not just Labour’s members, but a whole country desperate for change.

With four years until the next general election, there is probably an eighty percent chance I won’t be voting for Jeremy Corbyn.

However, I am open to persuasion and want to see more of him in debates, and eventually in an election campaign, so I can judge for myself whether he is a suitable Prime Minister rather than just reading about how he isn’t in the media.

On the other hand there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that I will vote for Owen Smith if he is Labour’s candidate in 2020.

For the record, I’m not too positive about either candidate’s policies, although as a person I prefer Corbyn to Smith. However none of that is relevant to this discussion.

Put simply, it’s a matter of principle. As a voter I am happy with the choice available and that’s the first time since I’ve been old enough to vote that I have been able to say that. I want to have the option of a centre-right government or a left wing alternative and I don’t appreciate a tiny clique attempting to take that choice away from me.

If there was one thing that contributed massively to the Leave vote in the EU referendum, it was the perception that no matter which way you vote in the general election, you get the same policies and vision for the future of Britain. Ultimately 52% of the country saw the EU referendum as their one and only chance to vote for change.

So why, in the peak of an anti-establishment mood that has swept the nation, would Labour decide to get rid of the first candidate since Margaret Thatcher who represents real change?

When Owen Smith’s supporters say Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable, they are basing that on elections from over 35 years ago. Because to take the polling companies’ word for it after they got the EU referendum and the general election so wrong would be tenuous to say the least.

If one generation rejects your policies, that doesn’t mean the next generation will. On the other hand, Owen Smith’s policies are of the variety that were emphatically rejected less than three months ago in the EU referendum, and just a year before that in the general election.

How many times do the remnants of New Labour have to come back and ram the same ideas down everyone’s throats before they get the message that the public no longer wants what they are selling?

Maybe they never will. Like many centrists in Labour Party, Owen Smith seems like such a fantasist that he may really believe that the majority of the country agree with him. Why else would he call for a second referendum on the terms of Brexit?

Not only would the Leave voters from the last referendum be even more determined to see their democratic wishes respected, it will be so far down the line that the infamous ‘experts’ will switch to supporting a second Leave vote just so Theresa May can get on with the job and restore certainty to the economy.

But in Owen Smith’s world, none of this matters. It’s all a bad dream and one day he will wake up and find none of this ever happened, Jeremy Corbyn is a backbencher, we’re not leaving the EU and it’s 1997 all over again.

In reality, an Owen Smith Labour Party is more likely to wake up on a May morning in 2020 to find that they have failed to be elected even into opposition, let alone into government.

If they were smart, Owen Smith’s band would have realised that they are swimming against the tide of history, ironically just like old Labour in the 1980s, and that a break from New Labour is essential to ensure the centre-left’s long-term survival.

However in the past three months, this bitter, twisted, entitled clique have shown they are nowhere near as smart as they think they are.