THE POINT OF THE TORIES

The Tory party is like some particularly gloomy man going through a mid-life crisis. His wife has left him, to universal applause. As so often in these cases, he seems unable to talk about anything except himself, thereby making his position worse. He takes a girl out to dinner, and she is prepared to give him a go, in spite of poor reviews. The more he goes on about his difficulties, and fails to discuss her own interests and attractions, the more she taps her foot.

Then her eyes glaze over, and then she just walks out and leaves him to his maunderings, rather as the British electorate has now twice deserted the Tory party. There have been some notable literary examples of self-obsession. One thinks of Erisichthon, the person who ended up self-cannibalistically gnawing his entrails; or of Narcissus, also commemorated by Ovid, who spent so long gazing at his own reflection in a pool that he went into a trance, toppled in and drowned. The behaviour of Onan does not seem entirely irrelevant. The Tory party, in its current psychosis, beats them all hollow. If it does not get its act together, then it will assuredly join those characters in the realms of myth.

For each Tory MP who goes on the radio to give what he fondly imagines is a statesmanlike assessment of the ‘crisis’, there is a BBC producer secretly chuckling in the knowledge that this dolt is making the crisis worse. It is hard to exaggerate the bafflement of Tories up and down the land as they read about these Lilliputian feudings and sackings. Most of them would be more than happy for Iain Duncan Smith to continue to lead the party, provided the rest of the MPs would support him. Frankly, they would settle for anyone with a bit of oomph.