Race to the Bottom

The spectacle of the Tory leadership campaign would be funny - if it weren't so frightening. The candidates have been trying to outdo each other in trashing the party's record since 2010, writing the Labour Party's script while doing so.

The entire process has comprised candidates vying with each other to see who can portray themselves as being worse than Johnson while promising to deliver the most damage to the UK in the short time available before the next General Election - the greater the damage, the more they'll appeal to the Tory Faithful. Campaigning, as Johnson proved, is very different from governing - he was in campaign mode 100% of the time; permanently over-promising and under-delivering, if delivering at all. His Net Zero strategy was a prime example - a populist statement lacking any detail of how it will be achieved, as evidenced by a High Court ruling last week.

It wouldn't surprise me to hear one of the two remaining candidates suggesting that small kids are sent up chimneys again, or proposing the introduction of lopping off hands for the first offence of theft. The knock out blow, and I'm waiting for Truss to come up with it, would be the reintroduction of the death penalty. That would go down a storm at the Tory Party Conference and guarantee her a standing ovation.

Both have promised a bonfire of remaining EU rules - ones concerning worker protection and suchlike. Rather than getting rid of EU rules, perhaps they would be better placed getting rid of swathes of homegrown NHS bureaucracy and bumf to streamline it and tackle the waiting list. The amount of form-filling that needs to take place may well be justified in times of underemployment, but certainly not now.

How Truss can come from being a Remainer, and then take her brain out - especially in the face of all the evidence to date - and profess her Brexiteeriness, can only be interpreted as naked ambition rather than an intellectual decision. She needs to be very careful, as Rees-Mogg needs a new Brexit Traitor to not deliver his impossible-to-deliver-Brexit, and she fits the bill perfectly.

As for Johnson himself, rumour has it that he's been personally training crack, Ukrainian troops, who are fanatically loyal to him, ready for a military coup. He was actually photographed at one of these training events last week.

There's even a suspicion that the London heatwave fires were started by him so as to clear space for his new palace - the Domus Aurea, which will be decorated in gold leaf wallpaper in the best dictator chic fashion.

He's hailed as a charismatic vote winner, but that was before he gained his liar's crown; I very much doubt he would find himself with an 80 seat majority if there were an election tomorrow. Ironically, the Tory Party's only hope against utter decimation would be Proportional Representation.

It's an utter shit-show - a race to the bottom.