Rishi, just get it over and call the election now

The Conservatives cannot avoid defeat. Dragging out the inevitable will only make the outcome worse

Pity Kemi Badenoch, who went on the Laura Kuenssberg show to say the Government is getting on with the job and spent seven out of 10 minutes answering questions about the Tory civil war. The consensus is that all these polls and briefings are a plot to swap Rishi out for Kemi. This is something she denies, and I believe her. It would be like volunteering to pilot Boeing’s latest plane.

The engine is on fire, a stewardess just flew past the window, and metres from impact, what idiot would willingly seize the controls? Who wants to be known forever as the gal who flew the Conservative Party into the Atlantic Ocean?

No, this Government is a dead duck, a fate as now inescapable as it has long been inevitable. One wing fell off with partygate, the other with Liz Truss. When Rishi Sunak was picked to take over, he had a choice.

He could have gone radical and Right-wing – slashed taxes, reduced immigration – and maybe the public would say, “He looks barmy… but I want to see where he’s going with this.”

The alternative was to accept defeat and lose with dignity, restore the “safe pair of hands” brand and save a few seats in the Home Counties.

By itself, either approach is coherent; Rishi, alas, tried both.

Sometimes we get Captain Boring, as with his refusal to cut taxes properly; other days, he’s the British Trump, as with the Rwanda plan. But even such flourishes of radicalism are undermined by his parallel sensibleness – so he won’t change the laws necessary to make a crazy scheme work. Rwanda is thus a replay of Brexit. To appeal to a constituency they inherited by accident and don’t understand, the Conservatives have committed themselves to a policy they haven’t the courage to see through.

They also don’t have the necessary Commons majority, for even if you remove Rishi, you’d still be left with a party of factions pulling in different directions and hating each other. This generates a dysfunction and paranoia that trickles down into the rest of the country. Have you noticed that Britain feels angrier than ever? Tempers are shorter; the language more foul (and that’s just my mother on the phone to Wickes).

As the nation gradually goes nuts, No 10 gambles that the longer it waits for an election, the economy might improve and the polls narrow.

Ironically, they’re postponing the only factor that could minimise Tory losses: proper scrutiny of Labour, a party that has few policies, weak leadership and plenty of juicy divisions to expose and exploit.

On Kuenssberg, too, was Rosena Allin-khan, a talented Left-winger sidelined by Starmer, who demanded a cease-fire in Gaza and implied that she was unhappy with Wes Streeting’s approach to the NHS (incidentally, I was at Cambridge with both Rosena and Wes, so it’s good to know that whoever runs this country, Labour or Tory, we all went to the same university.)

The UK needs an election, just as we once needed to “get Brexit done” or “end the lockdown”, and deferment of that decision makes the Tories appear cowardly and arrogant, exacerbating the awful sense that we are stuck together and the Government won’t set us free.

Perhaps the metaphor of a crash is wrong. Perhaps it’s more like coming to the end of a long-haul flight through turbulence, only to be kept at 30,000 feet in a holding pattern – while, in front, James Cleverly reclines another six inches into your face and, from behind, Rob Jenrick kicks the seat. The knowledge that Lord Cameron is having a whale of a time in business class is no comfort.

We all complain about strange or 

burdensome gifts at Christmas – the shirt that is absurdly small, so you’ll have to exchange it (“I left the receipt in the bag”) – but I can top everything. I was given a hurdy-gurdy.

For those not in the know, a hurdygurdy is a medieval musical instrument, a cross between a harmonium and a bagpipe, which produces a sound that is as loud as it is uncomfortable, and thus can only be played on an isolated Welsh hilltop by a girl called Bronwen. The friend who gave it to me cheerfully announced that “it’s old, so it’ll need to be completely restrung”, which I have no idea how to do.

I started ringing the music shops, and quickly discovered that I am not the only one unfamiliar with this instrument. The man at the Guitar Centre answered his phone sounding very harassed: “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” I said, “I wonder if you’d like to string my hurdy-gurdy?”

“Certainly not,” he replied with a tone of utter disgust, and slammed the phone down. I think he thought I was making an indecent suggestion.

Eventually a shop called Hob Goblin (of course) gave me the number of a hurdy-gurdy specialist in Ramsgate, which I reported back to my friend. “Oh, I know her,” he said, “she’s very expensive” – and I died inside, for I can see myself forking out thousands to fix an instrument I can’t play for fear of the neighbours calling the police.

If any reader does know their way around a hurdy-gurdy, please get in touch.