Are the Tories in any state to choose a leader?

Are the Conservatives in a fit state to choose a new leader? The party that gathers in Birmingham next week needs to face a difficult fact: no matter how bad things are, they may become a lot worse. The party has lost, but not learned. They preach liberty while preparing to vote for a smoking ban. They are wedded to a net-zero agenda that forces up the cost of living.

The difficulty is that all four candidates for the leadership are deeply compromised by the biggest mistakes of the past few years. On the issue of lockdown – perhaps the most damaging policy ever inflicted on this country by its government – none of them can say they did what they could to mitigate its damage. They ducked for cover instead.

Today, Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat all say they want low taxes. None has come up with a plausible plan for lowering them. All say it’s time to stop promising what cannot be delivered, yet none demurs from the uncosted 2050 net-zero fantasy. Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is being simplistically touted by some candidates as an automatic solution to the complicated problems of immigration – just as Brexit was. Welfare reform, the single most urgent issue facing the country, is absent from the debate.

The learning process may take time. But by 2029 (the likely date of the next election), the most pressing questions will have changed. What matters now is whether the candidates are aware of the real risks that they face. The chief risk is Reform UK. Of the 10,000 registered to attend Tory conference just 4,000 are activists – comparable with the number who attended Nigel Farage’s conference in Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre.