The Conservative leadership election, an unedifying spectacle at the best of times, is rapidly descending into a depressing political auction, where Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak try to outbid one another to prove just how “tough”, “Thatcherite” or “Conservative” they are.
With the partial exception of tax cuts (Mr Sunak has performed a U-turn on VAT on energy bills), this process is pushing the next government even further to the populist-nationalist-authoritarian right than the one of Boris Johnson.
When Ms Truss suggested she would expand the Rwanda refugee deportation programme, Mr Sunak offered to extend it to other countries. Even though Mr Sunak knows the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill could spark a ruinous trade war with the EU, he has to match her enthusiasm for this disastrous policy. And because the foreign secretary likes to be thought of as slightly less green than her colleagues, so Mr Sunak has to embrace fracking even though he knows full well it will do nothing for the immediate energy crisis and take years to feed through.
