With three make-or-break days in the Conservative leadership contest ahead, the bitter clashes so far have already laid bare the struggle for the soul of a party that appears determined to erase the political legacy of Boris Johnson.
The focus on what the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has called an “arms race” over tax cuts underlines the fact the Conservatives seem to be heading into very different political territory from that marked out in the 2019 election campaign, when Johnson asked longtime Labour voters to lend him their support.
