What the Tory leadership rivals haven’t discussed

In just over a week, Britain will have a new prime minister. No one can say that the 160,000 or so Conservative party members who will have made the choice have been deprived of exposure to the two candidates. The leadership race has dragged on for longer than a general election campaign, with endless televised hustings and public appearances. The process is supposed to be a training ground, testing candidates on their answers to all the toughest questions that will confront them in government. But in this respect it has failed.

High tax is a symptom of a wider problem: big spending. Unless spending changes, any tax cut will be temporary. Yet there has been very little acknowledgment from the candidates that government has grown out of all proportion to its usefulness. Tories seem hellbent on making the problem ever worse. Boris Johnson’s plan to subsidise care homes for wealthier pensioners is an unaffordable folly, yet both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak support the idea, and have doubled down on it throughout the campaign.

Both would keep the ‘net zero’ target which will only compound the energy security crisis we are now facing. Technology, science and the free market together are working wonders. Britain’s use of energy peaked in 2001 and has since fallen by almost 30 per cent – helped by the use of more efficient devices– despite the fact that our population and economy have grown. The fallacy that a green Britain can only come via the taxman and by government edict is demonstrable and unaffordable nonsense.

Then there is the welfare state. It was designed as a safety net for people in hard times to help them back to work. But a third of all British households are now in receipt of means-tested benefits.