It looks as if there is no one who can hold the Tory coalition together

During the leadership campaign, it was obvious that there was a big difference in policy between the two halves of the coalition – and it is a bigger difference than between the one-nation Tories and the Labour Party, writes John Rentoul

The party, like the Labour Party, and like any big party in a two-party, first-past-the-post system, is a coalition (PA)

Liz Truss has learned a brutal lesson in how parliamentary systems work. She made the elementary mistake of thinking that, because the Conservatives have a working majority of 71, she had a working majority of 71, and could therefore carry out the policies on which she had just been elected leader.

But she didn’t have a majority at all, because her very election as leader divided the Conservative Party in two. The party, like the Labour Party, and like any big party in a two-party, first-past-the-post system, is a coalition. Only the leadership election made this explicit. It sharply delineated one wing of the party, the Reaganite libertarians, from the other, the one-nation Tories. During the leadership campaign, it was obvious that there was a big difference in policy between the two halves of the coalition – and it is a bigger difference than between the one-nation Tories and the Labour Party.

The one-nation Tories and the Labour Party agree, for example, on a windfall tax and the reluctant need to put up corporation tax to try to turn the public finances around eventually. More to the point, they agree on keeping the top rate of income tax, which is why Truss had to send Kwasi Kwarteng out to abandon the policy, because it cannot get through what is in effect a hung parliament in which the Rishi Sunak Party holds the balance of power.