Leadership Contest: Or Row? Or Worse?

The unique contest between Boris and Hunt, the first when the membership outside parliament of a political party has elected a leader when that party is the government, is becoming increasingly unreal. Unreal because Hunt is making wildly optimistic assertions of his powers as a negotiator when he knows very well that the chances of the EU re-negotiating the Withdrawal Agreement are near to zero.

Yet Hunt’s optimism pales into insignificance when compared to the outlandish claims made about almost everything by Boris himself and by his campaign team. The result is that instead of a serious contest in the midst of a national crisis, this election for leader of the Tory party has become a spectacle with only tenuous links to reality. Essentially it is a row between different strands of a broken political party.

The problem is that the Tory party leads the minority government, which can no longer function as an executive because of constitutional tinkering. Neither can it be got rid of easily and with due cause, for the same reason. So we have the double blow of a busted party in a busted system. Add to that the spending and tax cutting plans of both candidates, neither of which add up for anybody with even a rudimentary grasp of simple arithmetic, and you have a state of affairs like no other in our history.

This clearly cannot go on yet nobody any longer can predict how and when it will end. We can only hope.