Boris Johnson is on holiday and the rest of the government has reached stalemate

With Britain standing at a moment of crisis, and clamour growing on every side for action to stop the nation’s old and vulnerable from freezing this winter, one voice has remained virtually silent – that of the UK government.

And it looks like the government is going to be essentially silent for at least another three weeks, as Boris Johnson has said there will be no major tax and spending announcements until a new prime minister arrives to replace him.

With Mr Johnson apparently in holiday mode, and his ministers seemingly unable to do anything more than mind the shop, it is becoming ever more evident that the sclerotic process of the Conservative leadership election is leaving a void where a government should be.

It seems an eon since Johnson announced on 7 July – now 36 days ago – that he was stepping down and would hand over to a new Tory leader after the election of a successor.

Since then, we have seen the tortuous process wind through seemingly endless rounds of nominations and hustings and TV debates, as an initial field of 11 would-be PMs was whittled down to eight on the ballot paper and then two who went on to fight for the support of the Tory membership.

And there are still 21 days before the ballot closes and 24 before the identity of the new PM is announced on 5 September, at which point she – or just conceivably he – has to appoint a cabinet and draw up an emergency Budget.

All this while, the clock is ticking towards the dispatch of new and unaffordable energy bills, and the elderly and disabled, welfare claimants and low-income workers become more and more anxious about how they are going to pay them.

Increasingly at Westminster, questions are being asked about why the process has to drag out for so long. The 60-day period between resignation and standing down is far more than the 25 working days required for a general election campaign, with an incomparably smaller electorate of just 160,000 or so Tory members.

With members allowed to vote online or by post as soon as they receive their ballots, it is quite possible that the outcome is already certain, with one candidate so far ahead that they cannot be overhauled even if they commit the most egregious of gaffes.

Yet still the two contenders have to slog on, travelling to hustings all over the country to address a live audience of a thousand or so and a TV viewership of little more, making daily announcements of new policies on protecting the green belt or abolishing university courses or deporting immigrants.

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And their teams keep up the fight with anonymous remarks and character attacks, feeding the atmosphere of blue-on-blue warfare that gives the contest the air of a settling of scores in a rivalrous Sicilian mafia family.

Tory officials will say that it is important that candidates are given sufficient time to make their case and members are enabled to see them in the flesh at hustings, so they can weigh up carefully their fitness for the highest office.

But in an age of TV debates, live-streamed meetings and online voting, that consideration has ever less weight, when compared to the damage done by a government in stasis and a country with no one in charge.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor