There are two viable ways to respond to an existential threat in the state of nature: fight or flight. You either destroy your predator, or you run away. You don’t just stand still, wave a white flag and wait for the end. The same is true in the political jungle, and yet the Tories’ nervous systems are now so dysfunctional that they have produced neither of the rational physiological responses to the terrifying likelihood of a Labour landslide.
Times are getting harder for conservatives and classical liberals, who face challenges not only from the traditional social democratic Left but also from the new revolutionaries of wokeness. That hard going, it must said, can be laid at the feet of the centre-right itself, which too often fails to represent voters in the centre and on the right