The Tories don’t need another TV debate – they need group therapy

For both their own good and ours, it would be best for them to lie on the proverbial couch and let it all out, writes Marie Le Conte

It feels stark that the candidates are barely paying lip service to the idea that whoever wins should seek to unite the party (PA)

I cannot remember when I first thought, “God, won’t it be pleasant when Boris Johnson leaves Downing Street?” What I do know now is that, when the thought first crossed my mind, a monkey’s paw curled a finger. Johnson is firmly on his way out, and someone else will replace him in less than six weeks.

I got what I wanted, and tonight Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak will take part in a televised debate, which I will have to watch because it is my job. In the eternal words of The Pussycat Dolls: be careful what you wish for.

What will the pair argue about tonight? It will probably not be transgender people, as they have thankfully moved on from that, though it was never clear that it needed to be part of the leadership race to begin with. Perhaps it will be refugees, and what to do about them. That was, after all, the topic of the weekend.

Should we put them on cruise ships? Sunak seems to think so. Should we send them all to Rwanda, even if the facilities there were only built to hold hundreds, not thousands? Sure, why not. By the end of the day, it feels likely that one of the candidates will have suggested building a trebuchet on the cliffs of Dover, just to make it easier.

Or maybe they will argue about China, which seems to be what the latest bunfight is about. I could run you through the arguments but I’m not sure I want to, and I’m not sure you want to read about them. It’s all online. You can go have a look if you want; it is not especially interesting.

The point is, there is a debate this evening, and it is not clear that anyone feels especially enthused by it. This is not an unreasonable reaction, as it is unlikely that anything of note will be achieved by it. What is more interesting, however, is the increasingly undignified behaviour of Conservative MPs.

Only this morning, Nadine Dorries took to Twitter to point out that Truss, her candidate of choice, wears cheap earrings from Claire’s Accessories. This matters, apparently, because Sunak recently wore a £3,500 suit while out and about. One might argue that Conservatives railing against expensive clothing is an odd sight, but that is beside the point.

An hour later, fellow MP and Sunak backer Angela Richardson quote-tweeted the secretary of state with a frankly statesmanlike “FFS Nadine! Muted”. Elsewhere, a Truss ally told The Times’s Steven Swinford that Rishi “should go back to being himself – a totally boring failed economist”. “Totally boring”! These rhetorical giants walk among us.

Blue-on-blue attacks are hardly a novel addition to politics, and it is true that social media wasn’t around when, say, Ken Clarke and Iain Duncan Smith were slugging it out. Still, it feels stark that the candidates are barely paying lip service to the idea that whoever wins should seek to unite the party.

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It is, if anything, the one topic they are being entirely honest about; the Conservative benches are bitter and divided, and no one can change that. This is why I would like to suggest an alternative to televised debates, Andrew Neil interviews, and whatever else the candidates have planned.

Over the next six weeks, I believe it would be useful for Conservative MPs – leadership contestants included – to engage in some group therapy. There are clearly issues they must work through, and it would be good for them to do so together.

Like dogs that were mistreated when young, Tory MPs who have spent the past six years endlessly fighting one another on Brexit, the pandemic, and various other matters no longer know how to act normally. They snarl and bite because it is all they know. For both their own good and ours, it would be best for them to lie on the proverbial couch and let it all out.

Or they could just decide to start acting like normal adults, but let’s not be unrealistic here.