The interminable Tory bickering will not help them win much needed favour
When relationships turn sour, couples can find themselves arguing even when they’ve forgotten what they’re arguing about.
Such is where we’ve got to with the Conservative party, currently locked in an almighty shouting match that nobody on either side can explain in less than three sentences, much less how it started or (worse) how they plan to resolve it.
The public, meanwhile, now resembles the kids in the back of the car whilst the parents air their long-rehearsed grievances at each other: stuck, awkwardly listening, waiting for the whole thing to come to a merciful end.
To anyone who hoped that Rishi Sunak would be able to turn the page on the Tory psychodrama – including this newspaper – the entire episode is deeply depressing. Just at the point at which the party should be challenging Labour to turn rhetoric into policy, to test what could well be a complacent opposition, it has yet again blown itself up.
The combination of avoidable mistakes by Number 10 and the seemingly inexhaustible appetite of some backbenchers to appear on the TV has yet again displayed a Conservative party seemingly incapable of competence, delivery or unity.
At 20-odd points back in the polls, the Tories owe it to the country to fight.
A Labour party that can ride to power solely on the back of not being the Tories will not be one that is ready for the rigours of government. When Keir Starmer spoke to this paper last month in an interview, he laughed that ‘everything is easier in opposition than in government.’
He would never have dreamed that the Conservative party would have made it all quite this easy.
The remedy for the Tory party’s malaise may now only be a spell in opposition. Until then, like the rowing parents, they owe it to those listening in to the interminable squabbling to zip it.