It’s been almost six months now since the last Tory leadership contest. So perhaps it was inevitable that another one would be along soon. No, not another attempted Boris Johnson comeback, despite the best efforts of nostalgic grassroots Tories gathering for a rally last weekend in Bournemouth. The contest much of the cabinet is now less than subtly limbering up for is the one that would follow defeat at the next election, and which some Tories think could yet provoke a historic split in the party.
The row currently engulfing Rishi Sunak’s government over immigration can only be properly understood in the context of the electorate some expect to be facing before too long; not the country at large so much as the sliver of it represented by card-carrying Conservative members, many still resentful about having first Johnson and then Liz Truss taken away from them.
