The unwieldy Tory leadership race looks like an exercise in Brexit time-wasting

Pushing Theresa May out of Downing Street might have been seen as a cruel but necessary sacrifice. Instead it was the shortest of preludes to a protracted Conservative leadership election

It is now almost two months since the European Council graciously agreed to the UK’s request for an extension to the Article 50 Brexit deadline. At the time, the president of the council, Donald Tusk, implored this of Britain: “Do not waste this time.” Brexit day was pushed back, again, to 31 October, Halloween. We are about a third of the way through our reprieve. Not much has been done.

Though too polite to say so, Mr Tusk may be disappointed by the progress the UK has made in determining a way forward for Brexit. Instead, it seems like the British are showing clear signs of displacement activity.

We’ve had two rounds of national elections, including for the European parliament, which demonstrated two things beyond doubt.

First, that no one agrees on what the results mean. They either signal a public who wish MPs to “get on with Brexit”; or an electorate so weary of the Brexit psychodrama that they simply want it to stop, and have the country just stay in the EU because Brexit is becoming undoable.

Thus, the elections indicated that, as in 2016 and ever after, the nation is still caught between the two irreconcilable blocs of public opinion. Our preferences are self-contradictory – we have the cake, and are eating it, and no one seems to be enjoying it much.

Taking all the wrong prompts, the Conservative Party has taken decisive action. The only trouble is, the decisive action has been to delay taking any decisive action.

Pushing Theresa May, in tears, out of Downing Street might be thought to have been a cruel but necessary sacrifice in the interests of settling the issues once and for all. Instead it was the shortest of preludes to a protracted Conservative leadership election which will take many weeks, if not months. There are a dozen candidates now declared, only one less than the number of runners in this year’s Epsom Derby, though the heavy betting is focused on the real nags, not the Tory ones.

If only the Tory leadership race could be concluded as quickly as the Derby.

The problem is that if it is only the last-placed candidate who withdraws at each stage during the MPs’ portion of the vote (with a few days grace between each round of voting), and if a month was allowed for the members in the country to choose between the final two, it would be theoretically possible for the Conservatives to squander most of the summer months choosing a successor to Ms May.

The immediate problem is the rule by which only two other MPs are required to support a leadership bid. The rules were never meant to deal with such an array of no-hopers and chancers. The Conservative backbench 1922 Committee, which can literally make up the rules as it goes along, needs to tighten up the selection process now.

Almost all of the names have no chance of getting to pose on the steps of No 10. Their main motivation is to raise their profile, leave a calling card and, if they get anything like a respectable showing, get a promotion or a job in the new cabinet. Few have anything to lose from taking a punt, and spending lazy summer evenings going round the rubber chicken circuit, mouthing what 160,000 Conservative members want to hear, and offering illogical, unrealistic answers to problems that the last two years have shown to be insoluble.

Labour seems scarcely more willing to face up to political reality, its gyrations on a second referendum symbolic of a party led by an anti-EU clique which believes that there is such a thing as a socialist or “jobs first” Brexit. It would be amusing if it weren’t so tragic.

But glance across the Channel and there is yet more stasis on show. The altered complexion of the European parliament – with more greens and populists around to break up the old ways of reaching consensus – means that a new European Commission and successor to Jean-Claude Juncker might not be in place by the autumn.

Even if the British were ready to talk today, the Europeans would not. Of course they say the UK-EU withdrawal agreement is not up for renegotiation or amendment anyway. That is true, but the current situation means they cannot prove it to the likes of Dominic Raab or Boris Johnson; and it certainly means that there can also be no progress on the political declaration.

Though the personalities are not as numerous, the contest for the president of the EU Commission is just as fiercely contested as that for Number 10 – Michel Barnier, Manfred Weber, Margrethe Vestager, Jan Zahradil are the more-or-less familiar names being bandied around. Quite apart from Brexit, they, and fellow commissioners, will have their work cut out with Europe’s slowing economy, Italy’s rebellious government, Russia and the migration crisis.

There are many uncertainties surrounding the next few months, but some things are clear.

Political change, in the UK and the EU, makes progress by 31 October virtually impossible, and a further extension or a revocation of Article 50 will be required to avoid a no-deal Brexit. Second, it is already apparent that far from working towards a solution, the ruling party in the UK is retreating further into a state of denial, jabbering about the Brady amendment and the World Trade Organisation as if these were novel ways out of an imminent self-administered economic shock.

Britain is in a state of civil war, a cultural as much as political one, but without the means for one side to emerge victorious. The only way out of the morass is to put the issue to the 47 million British voters, and not the 160,000 of them who happen to be card-carrying Tories.