There has been no vision for a crisis-ridden society coming out of the race to be the next Tory leader. One is desperately needed. Patients are dying in ambulances queueing outside hospitals that are too full to accept patients. Greenhouse gas emissions are to blame for deadly heatwaves, but the government can’t spell out how it would meet its promise to cut them. Voters since 2010 have given the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt. The polls, and recent byelections, strongly suggest that the public are no longer inclined to do so.
There is a palpable sense of the country being adrift. As the former Tory cabinet minister Michael Gove admitted earlier this week, under the Conservatives the core parts of government simply aren’t functioning any more. The new prime minister ought to be a clean break with the past. However, ballots of Conservative MPs have whittled the choice down to two contenders: the former chancellor Rishi Sunak and the foreign secretary, Liz Truss. Both represent a continuation of Boris Johnson’s politics rather than a repudiation of them. There’s no sign that either will reverse the policy of increasing government control over opponents in parliament, in elections, in the courts and on the streets.
This pair will slug it out over August for the support of Tory party members, who have the final say. The risk is that Britain ends up with a prime minister who is a mere cipher for the particular discontents and impulses of a section of a membership that is older, whiter, more southern and wealthier than the rest of the population. The country’s structural problems are afterthoughts in this contest so far. The government, meanwhile, is becoming unaccountable to parliament: bills are being pulled with little explanation; MPs are not being given proper time to scrutinise trade deals; and cabinet ministers are not bothering to turn up to select committee hearings.
On immigration, Europe, nationalism and the environment, there’s little to distinguish between the frontrunners. Despite campaigning to stay in the EU in 2016, Ms Truss’s tax cuts and institutional disruption mark her out as the candidate of the Brexit right. As does her base in Lord Howard’s house, from which successive rightwing insurgents, including Mr Johnson, have launched their assaults on the Tory establishment. Brexit has unleashed a revolution that eats its own. Mr Sunak finds himself on the menu, a leave-backing Thatcherite who appears too leftwing for the Tory membership. But the main courses have been Conservative prime ministers who, like Shakespeare’s Henry IV, found that “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” while their party is consumed by plotting. Put-downs and dirty tricks have made this campaign memorable. But they threaten a bitter resentment that is not easy to control; political careers have been consumed by it.
If he wins, Mr Sunak would be the first non-white prime minister in Britain. Ms Truss, if successful, would be the country’s third female prime minister. Either would be an important moment for diversity. But this underscores the symbolic value of representation. Both candidates bear responsibility for the government’s substantial failure to remedy systemic inequality. Mr Johnson clearly favours Ms Truss. Her flaws are all too obvious, which is why – probably – she has the backing of Mr Johnson. The Tory party is choosing the country’s next prime minister. The Conservatives have a chance to provide a stable, competent government. Britain needs one.
