The ruthless inefficiency of the Tory party

It is hard to love the Conservative party. But one reason it has at least always commanded a certain amount of respect is thanks to its reputation for ruthless efficiency. Personally I have found that reputation to be only half true. It is true that the party can be ruthless, but only in being ruthlessly inefficient.

Look at the mechanism by which it removed the Prime Minister who brought it its largest majority since Margaret Thatcher. True, Boris Johnson had his faults. But did the party not know these in advance? Why was it not able to add the stabilisers so obviously needed to keep a rickety, not to mention rackety, figure in the top job once it had placed him there?

It should cause no surprise. For this is of course the party that gave us John Major, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, elevating each in turn only to discover each time that a knifing was sadly necessary. It is the party whose most successful leader in recent decades was David Cameron, who entered parliament in 2001, was swiftly enthroned in the top job, managed to form a minority coalition government, and was out of parliament again within just 15 years. It is the party that then gave us Theresa May as prime minister, after a period in which there was a brief, Penny Mordaunt-like fever to make Andrea Leadsom run the country.

Now here we are again. The parliamentary party has done what it is so good at. The political assassination has occurred. The 1922 Committee has once again become a subject of national interest. And the Conservatives have once again presented the country with a lot of people who would be perfectly good ministers of state, but nobody who seems wildly obvious prime ministerial material.