"...neither realises that to the vast majority of those who support Farage they are already home, and are not going to forgive a party that has lied to them over policy for 14 years."

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The US may have rather important elections going on, but here in the UK we have one of our own, though frankly it really isn't that important. It is the Conservative party leadership vote and you will probably not have heard of it - unless you have a strange sense of news priorities.

The protracted and masochistic exercise in public navel gazing is drawing to a close. This act of performative self-harm has cut the final slashes of its own mottled skin. On Thursday 31st of October the last ballots will be cast and the results are to be announced on the following Saturday.

The contest has been essentially uninteresting and unedifying in equal measure, with the normal line up of never were, never have and never will be putting themselves forward. One by one the contenders have dropped by the wayside into deserved obscurity. One, a chap called Mel Stride, caused a focus group (composed of Tory members) to ask “Who is she?”

At the start of the campaign a poll claimed that 62% of the population couldn't care less who won, including the only internally distressing figure of 36% of the Conservatives' own supporters. This in part may be in the large part because the last time the Tory membership were allowed to vote (after the demise of Boris Johnson premiership in a morass of failures, lies contempt and corruption) Lizz Truss won the membership vote. Then, not having the support of the Parliamentary party, was unable to weather the storms that she faced when she tried to apply a massive defibrillator shock to the economy. The MPs melted away and she fell. To be replaced by Rishi Sunak, the man who had been rejected by the membership. He may have had the support of the elected, but by their rejection of the members, they guaranteed the slow and perhaps permanent death of their own brand.

Then this year’s general election smashed great, fat masonry nails through the plywood of their coffin.

The penultimate round of the election, when the Parliamentarians chose the final two to go out to the membership to vote (trust me these processes are as far removed from the RNC and DNC as is possible within the Anglosphere tradition) was tragedy becoming farce.

At that point, the former Foreign Secretary (read Secretary of State) and Home Secretary (Secretary of the Interior) and leader of the left/centrist tradition in the party, James Cleverly (was any name the opposite of nominative determinism more - his district is called Braintree, I kid you not) was the favourite to make the final round. He was already in the lead amongst Parliamentarians and playing to his strengths, and eschewing his weaknesses he looked good. He is very likable, self deprecating and had already held two of the four high offices of state. A safe pair of hands who, though not impressing anybody, had not pissed anybody off either. One commentator described him as the Tory party’s own ‘emotional support puppy’.

The other two in contention are both perceived as part of the Tory party’s right, and thus more aligned to the broader membership if not the Parliamentary party.

Kemi Badenoch, UK born, but Nigeria raised. A gut right winger, but thin on policy - her major activity has been as a black woman fighting the culture war from the right. A competent performer in the Commons, she is well liked by the party membership as a vocal Brexiteer. However to her colleagues she is believed to be intellectually brittle, self-serving, untrustworthy and frankly lazy.

Last was Robert Jenrick, Bobby J to his fans and Generic to his detractors. Jenrick was an identikit middle of the road, pro-EU MP. Then one day a couple of years ago, he had a damascene conversion. He had been made an immigration minister and he resigned from the role when he discovered that it was almost impossible to do anything about illegal immigration when the final decisions about deportation continue to be made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Since he threw his hat into the ring he has been making more and more extreme comments on immigration, attempting to outflank Nigel Farage and his Reform Party (disclaimer: I worked for them until a month ago) on issues that have been Farage’s preserve for well over a decade.

The last man out had been Tom Tugenhadt, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the leading figure from the left, so it was expected that Cleverly would pick up his votes. This would have given the membership a straight choice of the left or right of the party. All well and good, but that would of course be without factoring in the Conservative MPs themselves.

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They call themselves the most sophisticated electorate in the world, others would prefer the word duplicitous. Whatever happened, they were too clever by half, voting tactically to block one or other of the two right wing candidates they managed to knock out their preferred candidate Cleverley.

So then there were two. The problem for the Tory party will be exactly as it was when Truss replaced Johnson. When the members are asked they will always go for the one that most closely resembles their idea of conservatism, but that is far to the right of a parliamentary party that is by definition more centrist than they.

The final round of debates and public commentary has had three themes. Jenrick is making wilder and wilder promises about dealing with migration trying to outflank Farage on the right, by writing policy cheques that the party will never honour. Braverman is trying to come across as the sensible one, but in doing so refuses to tell anybody what in fact she wants to do.

The contest has descended, for the first time to be fair, into petty bickering at the level of a college popularity contest in a drunken sorority house.

Neither of them have the confidence of their peers, and neither will last until the next election. Both seem to think that they are the ones placed to bring Reform voters home, neither realises that to the vast majority of those who support Farage they are already home, and are not going to forgive a party that has lied to them over policy for 14 years.

So get out the popcorn for the rest of the week. Enjoy it as a side issue to a somewhat more important contest in the US, but remember, don't eat it all at once, you will need some more in a couple of years' time when the whole thing happens again and they rip the band aid off their self incurred wounds and start trailing that knife yet again.

The thing is for the Tory Party, they need to get it together by 2029 and the next election. With this macabre rollercoaster and the rise of Reform UK, it might already be too late.