Whoever wins this race will inherit the social and economic failings of the austerity era – all of which they voted for
The Duke of Wellington, surveying his troops, said he didn’t know what effect the spectacle would have on the enemy, “but, by God, they frighten me”. What’s left of the serious elements of the Conservative party are frightened as they view the battlefield ahead – and they don’t expect to win a Waterloo.
“If the Tories lose the next election, they may well be out of power for a generation,” warns the Spectator’s political editor, James Forsyth. The progressive forces of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens would bring in electoral reform and voting at 16. Even under a single transferable vote system, according to Forsyth, the Tories would only have won twice since the second world war, and not even Margaret Thatcher could have governed on her own.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Guardian Newsroom: who will succeed Boris Johnson?
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