It is not so much the elephant in the room as the big fat hairy mammoth. Brexit is the most consequential thing the Conservatives have done since the last election. More, it is the most impactful legacy of their 14-year stretch in power. When the histories are written, every other failure of this Tory era will be a footnote compared with that epic folly.
With Partygate and all the other scandals on his watch, Boris Johnson recklessly tested Britain’s tolerance for being governed by a prime minster who flagrantly debased standards in public life. With the maxi-disaster of her mini-budget, Liz Truss conducted a deranged experiment that exploded not just in her face, but blew the doors off the country. Ruinous to the Tory party’s reputation as those episodes were, nothing has left a wound as deep, gaping and untreated as that inflicted by Brexit. Yet there’s a conspiracy of silence about it from both the Tory leader and his Labour rival. It did not feature once, not even as an aside, in last week’s 60 minutes of televised mouth-to-mouth combat between the two. Rishi Sunak, who advocated Brexit, doesn’t want to talk about it for the obvious reason that none of the promises which accompanied that enterprise – “a new golden age” anyone? – has come true. He will also be aware that most voters have concluded it has been such a calamity for the UK that we ought never to have torn ourselves apart from the EU.
