It is an unedifying way to choose a prime minister: five candidates left in the race, vying to make it to the shortlist of two that will be put to the tiny, unrepresentative slice of the electorate who are Conservative party members. Yet this is exactly how Boris Johnson’s successor will be selected, as a result of Conservative party rules that put the ultimate decision about who leads their party in the hands of its members.
Any contest to be the next prime minister of this country should be focused on the big challenges Britain faces now and in the coming decades. Most immediately, there is the significant spike in people’s cost of living, devastating for so many families on low to modest incomes. But in the longer term, there are structural economic and societal issues that have gone unaddressed while Conservative politicians have obsessed about delivering a hard Brexit to the detriment of the UK. There is Britain’s low productivity growth, its internationally-high levels of regional inequality and an economy dominated by low-paid jobs that offer few opportunities for progression. The dysfunctional housing market, which means that growing numbers of people will hit retirement having rented their whole lives, and which suppresses the life chances of young people who cannot afford to move to areas where there are opportunities. The fact that we have profound health and educational inequalities that hold back young people from realising their potential, with a 20-year gap in life expectancy for people who live in different parts of the country. The lack of planning for an ageing society: we spend too little on healthcare compared with other similar countries, and politicians have completely neglected the issue of how we care for the growing number of people who will experience physical and mental decline in old age. And the desperate need for urgent international action on the climate crisis.
