The excuse for the vacuum in decision-making is the protracted leadership showdown, which will be finally resolved next Monday when the party reveals who it is forcing on Britain to be our next prime minister. He – or, polls suggest, more likely she – will face the worst crisis in living standards in a generation, key public services under unprecedented pressure, waves of industrial action by workers struggling to keep up with rising inflation, in the midst of war , and with the high probability that Britain will soon slip into recession. A senior Tory uses the technical term “clusterfuck of nightmares” to describe what awaits his next leader. It takes an exceptional prime minister to lead Britain through this perfect storm. However, the contest for the post was not a confidence-building and confidence-inspiring showcase of the strength of character and quality of ideas of the rival candidates. The fight for Number 10 was most notable for the bitter venom of their exchanges. Rishi Sunak and his ilk have attacked Liz Truss as a deranged fantasist with an immoral agenda that will throw millions into poverty and be an “election suicide note”. She and her outsiders have called him a “rehabilitator”, a “disgrace” who is “unfit for office” and a “socialist”, which is the watchword of the Tory party. Both claim to be heirs to Margaret Thatcher, setting their party’s compass on a rehash of the ideology of someone who ceased to hold office more than 30 years ago The evil of this vitriol is the narcissism of petty differences. The battle was fiercely personal, but fought on a narrow strip of dogmatically right-wing ground. Both are market-loving, regulation-loathing, state-shrinking Tories who are hard Brexiters, Mr Sunak by conviction, Mrs Truss by a career-friendly conversion. Both treated the many challenges facing Britain as less important than devising tax cuts that would benefit the wealthiest more. They have only fought over timing. He wants tax cuts tomorrow. it would wait until there is less risk to fuel inflation already in the double digits. Both claim to be Margaret Thatcher’s heirs, setting their party’s compass on a rehash of the ideology of someone who ceased to hold office more than 30 years ago. This isn’t just the testimony of an unfixable side effect from a fictionalized version of the Iron Lady. He also talks about the Tory party drifting to the right. At the start of this contest, there were two candidates vying to represent the centrist wing of One Nation Conservatism that was once the dominant tradition of the party. Jeremy Hunt, runner-up in the leadership contest three years ago, was knocked out in the first ballot of Tory MPs by a meager 18 votes. Tom Tugendhat scored well with voters who saw him in televised debates, but not with his colleagues, who eliminated him in the third round. Many moderate Tory MPs felt it was a waste of time to back a moderate candidate because only someone who presented as Thatcherite right-winger could win the second round decided by the select group. The 160,000 or so Tory members are a small fraction of a small part of the country. Their views do not reflect the views of the public. they are not even all representative of Tory voters. The leadership contest has failed to address many of the burning questions facing Britain. We are in the grips of an intensifying climate crisis coupled with a massive escalation of hydrocarbon costs. Now more than ever, Britain requires a strategy to meet its future needs through clean energy. But the candidates have used the mountains to whine about solar farms, downplaying the nimbleism and competition towards net zero that prevails among Tory members. Basic public services are in critical condition. Michael Gove, until very recently a senior cabinet official, admitted that key arms of government are simply not working: “There are certain basic functions – giving you your passport, giving you your driving license – that are simply, this moment, it’s not working.” Without action to protect people from colossal increases in their bills, there is a very serious risk of seeing the fabric of society disintegrate One in eight of the population in England is on a waiting list for NHS treatment. The queue is projected to rise to 10 million by 2024. The Covid backlog will be compounded by strikes and the unbudgeted impact of soaring electricity and fuel costs, which will particularly fall in sectors such as education and health, which they consume a lot of energy. In response to the seriousness of these challenges, the candidates responded with courage. Mr Sunak has dusted off the tumultuous whistling of fines for people who fail to turn up for GP appointments, a proposal which is far from trivial in the face of what he recognizes as a “national emergency” in our health services. Ms Truss backed the idea of pumping in cash by cutting the pay of public sector staff working in less prosperous areas of the country, before backing down in the face of furious backlash from Tory MPs representing those areas. The most immediate challenge to the next prime minister’s swelling wave of horror is the energy emergency. Without action to protect people from colossal increases in their bills, there is a very serious risk of seeing the social fabric disintegrate. Millions of citizens who believe in living by the rules and paying their dues, the kind of people conservative politicians always claim to respect, will be forced to choose between denying warmth and food to their families or failing to pay their bills. their accounts. There is a growing view among Conservative MPs that the handling of the energy crisis will determine the fate of the new prime minister and determine their party’s prospects at the next election. However, none of the candidates have given answers commensurate with the seriousness of the threat. Ms Truss derided “handouts” and even used the word “bug” to dismiss the idea of more government support for households facing spiraling energy costs this winter. This language indicates a complete failure to understand the magnitude of this storm. Even Tory MPs who support Trasos have been concerned. They are also bewildered, for it is clear that something big must be done. No government can expect to survive by sitting on its hands as millions of households, large numbers of businesses and parts of the public sector are swamped by a tsunami of overwhelmingly higher energy bills. In recent days, people close to the foreign secretary have said she will impose mitigation measures once she is in Number 10, but will not say what they will amount to, leaving people to live in fear that she will be left to weather the storm alone. The contenders have also failed to say how they will restore integrity to our public life after the misdeeds of the Johnson prime ministership. This contest is happening because the outgoing Prime Minister was fired by his MPs for being unfit to hold the office he dishonored. However, no account has been taken of his swagger, rule-breaking and cheating. Mr Sunack did not want to go there because many Tories remain fascinated by the cult of Johnson and have fallen into the fiction that he was a colossus brought down by treacherous colleagues. Ms Truss has calculated that her ambitions are best served by presenting herself as loyal to an “imaginary prime minister” and promoting the myth that Mr Johnson was the victim of betrayal rather than the architect of his own downfall. Worryingly for anyone hoping a change at Number 10 would lead to a more ethical regime, he refused to commit to filling the standards watchdog’s post left vacant since the latter quit in disgust over Mr Johnson. She has also voiced her opposition to a parliamentary inquiry into whether the outgoing prime minister lied to the Commons about Partygate. The favorite to take over as Number 10 appears to be more interested in shielding Boris Johnson than protecting Britons from the escalating crises he will leave in his wake. Andrew Rawnsley is the Observer’s Chief Political Commentator
