Over the next few weeks, a maddening political game will unfold. The gaggle of MPs who want to be Tory leader and prime minister – some comically overconfident, others downright absurd – will make their pitch to Conservative MPs, party members and the general public. All of them will claim they can clear up the debris left by Boris Johnson. Amid what is already starting to look like frenzied internal warfare, some of the loudest noise will be made by contenders offering a thoroughgoing return to the Tory credo of the small state and free market.
Meanwhile, another ritual will continue – one that is as essential, in its own way, to political business-as-usual grinding on. Whatever is suggested by polls done in the midst of such a huge Tory meltdown, the Labour party still faces a huge uphill struggle to win a parliamentary majority. It still has no convincing or even coherent narrative about what Britain has been through or where it is going, and a fresh fear may soon be nagging at its senior figures: when Johnson finally exits, what if a new Tory leader enjoys a honeymoon period and edges ahead? But whenever any frustrations with Labour start to surface, the electoral system ensures it has an almost brutal pitch to voters: if millions of people want to try to get rid of the Conservatives, it remains the only option they have.
