The Conservative Party is broken. How do we put it out of its misery?

The last few weeks have surely demonstrated to anyone still with a grip on reality that the Conservative Party is no longer fit to govern. It is broken. It is deeply divided and incapable of electing a competent leader. It has put in office a government of breathtaking incompetence.

It is so totally divorced from the reality of its own plight that there is serious talk of replacing the leader it has only just elected. It is already on its fourth leader – and Prime Minister – in a little over six years. Now some senior members of the party think the country should have a fifth Prime Minister of their choice inflicted on the country. That fact alone should tell you this is a party no longer fit to hold office.

That is barely the start of the charge sheet to be held up against the Conservative Party. 

There have been many governments in my lifetime that I have profoundly disagreed with on policy but I now realise had the saving grace of being competent, and capable of pursuing their agenda effectively. Perhaps we all took for granted that those at the top of major parties were capable of holding senior government posts and exercising their responsibilities seriously, listening to experts and making informed, coherent decisions. Maybe it is one of those things you do not notice until it is gone. Gone it is.

Abyss of incompetence
The succession of Prime Ministers the Conservatives have inflicted on the country since David Cameron ran away from responsibility for the outcome of the Brexit referendum has been a decline into a grim abyss of incompetence. May to Johnson and now Truss. Every time the country must have hoped for better, only to get worse.

The Conservatives took two months off from the job of running the country to elect a new leader and the best they could come up with was Truss. That really tells you all you need to know about the state of a once great party. It was always obvious to sane observers of the UK political scene that she was going to be a disaster but no-one could have expected her government to implode within weeks of taking office.

The day she was elected the Tories probably kissed goodbye to their chances of winning the next election. Now, they will be doing well to escape electoral obliteration: defeat is certain. We may even be witnessing the death throes of the modern Conservative Party. In opposition the blame game between its warring factions may grow so bitter and intense that they part company with each other.

The country is crying out for competence in high office. Labour may have an uninspiring leader but at least he looks like a safe pair of hands and Starmer’s frontbench increasingly looks like a government-in-waiting.

Long wait for relief
The problem is we may have to wait until 2024, even until the last possible date for the next General Election of 23 January 2025, to put the Conservative Party out of its misery. Imagine the damage Truss’s gaggle of bumbling clowns will have done to the country by then.

We are in unprecedented times, however. We cannot write-off the possibility that this government will collapse into as yet unforeseen chaos that leads to a General Election much sooner. 

We can only hope.