Britain has largely been ungoverned – and certainly not governed with even a basic level of competence – for the best part of a year now.

Barely had Covid quietened down and COP 26 been completed, that this latest phase started – around this time last year:

• The  Owen Paterson saga with his resignation in early November following Johnson’s U-turn on his attempts to protect him
• From December onwards the whole Partygate issue which dragged on and on, despite a resignation by someone who wasn’t even at a party and endless lies and obfuscations to Parliament
• The Sue Gray investigation followed by …..
• The Met’s interminable investigation leading to a fines of the PM and the Chancellor
• Endless off the record bitching about Johnson by his MPs 
• Which they briefly interrupted to bitch about Sunak’s wealth and his wife’s non-domiciled tax status
• Voters joined in by blowing two gigantic raspberries at the government in the Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton by-elections 
• There then followed the VoNC in the PM, won by him, giving him a brief reprieve until ….
• Johnson’s bizarre response to the Chris Pincher affair, sending his Ministers out to lie for him until even they had enough
• As did Lord Geidt, the government’s chief ethics advisor
• Mass resignations from the government followed 
• Johnson tried to replace his Ministers but finally resigned and disappeared off on holiday
• An interminable Tory leadership campaign followed with Truss installed last month
• In order to craft a mini-Budget which resulted in severe market instability, forcing her – in the hope of saving her job – to dismiss the Chancellor for delivering her policies.

No country can be called well-governed when the government, its senior members, its MPs and party members are so divided, distracted and consumed by endless in-fighting – over policies, ethical conduct, personalities, leadership – and the very basic issue of deciding what on earth the party is for.

About the only part of the government which has carried on was Defence which supported Ukraine. All credit to Wallace and Johnson for this, though this was building on work done over many years by their predecessors. Sunak too tried to do his bit at the Treasury – thus scuppering his leadership bid – only to find that it is his policies which are now being implemented. 

And still it goes on. A new Chancellor with a severely – possibly terminally – weakened PM. A PM implementing her opponent’s policies with little Parliamentary support, no electoral mandate and now no mandate from party members either, having ditched the policies she promised them. A lack of clarity about what the government’s economic policy now is, two partial U-turns, the markets still unimpressed, a new fiscal statement expected. More mutterings about replacing the leader. When? By whom? How?

Will it be over Xmas? Who can say? Two things can be said, however. First, this level of shambolic and selfish behaviour humiliates the country and harms its reputation – as well as destroy whatever claim the Tories still had to economic competence, always hugely overstated by them, in any case. (“It takes 20 years to establish a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it.” The Tories will likely have a very long time in opposition to reflect on this maxim.)

Second and much more importantly, the Tories have been (and the last year has merely been the culmination of 5 years of similar behaviour) undermining and wilfully destroying the guard rails and institutions carefully established over years to enable stable, lawful, evidence-based, stress-tested and soundly advised governance. They are harming the country’s economy, institutions and citizens.

“There is a great deal of a ruin in a nation” said Adam Smith. While the Tories remain in office, we will have plenty of opportunity to discover exactly how much ruin there can be.

Cyclefree