I'm in charge Captain......
The current four candidates for the Tory leadership should be down to 3 by this afternoon, as the far right of the party tries to find anyone capable of defeating Rishi Sunak.
Given he is a Brexit supporter this is a bit strange but the ERG’s favourite Liz Truss arrives with the zeal of a convert, or more precisely the zeal of a very, very ambitious politician.
I always feel that when she gets all patriotic and zealous, arguing that Brexit is a triumph you can see the fear and doubt in her eyes. But she puts the shutters up and carries on.
Perhaps she now believes what she once thought was rubbish, perhaps she thinks “only Nixon could go to China” and that she can cut a nice sensible deal but that she has to be in power first and with unimpeachable credentials (pun intended).
But the fact is this is like the crew of the Titanic fighting over who shall be the last commanding officer now that Captain Smith has hit the iceberg.
This is not to say the Tories cannot win the next election, media bias, and the Tory party’s ability to reinvent itself are legendary. But the coffers are nearly empty, recession is round the corner and the cost of living crisis has only just started.
In top of all that there is Brexit which will once again take up all the government’s time and effort, as it seeks to appease its UKIP membership with another fight to get “Brexit done”—again.
None of the candidates wants anything else but a distracting fight with the EU. Shallow, shameless and senseless the Tory party will stumble on.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.