‘Taking back control’ will end up biting the Tories

Unfriendly commentators can recite insults against the Conservative party in our sleep. It is a rolling shambles, populated by backstabbing fantasists and fanatics. Conservatives are so irredeemably split they removed Boris Johnson only to find they could not unite behind a replacement. Good government is impossible when the ruling elite is composed of shifting factions whose complex hatreds would baffle a historian of the Lebanese civil war.

But a paradox of this government is that there are never splits about the concentration of power in the hands of the executive. Whatever else Conservatives revolt against, they support the Tory state as it continues relentlessly to centralise. And this from a party that once promised to give back control to the peoples of the UK.

To anyone who cares about corruption and unaccountable government the procurement bill now before Parliament is astonishing. About £1 in every £3 of taxpayers’ money – some £300 billion a year – is spent on the public procurement of everything from tanks to hospitals.