Labour sits back while the Tories fight each other – the contest must end NOW

Zombie battle

THE decision to hold an interminable series of regional hustings to choose our new Prime Minister has proved extraordinarily ill-judged.

While mostly the same questions and answers are trotted out at each event, a needless indulgence in the internet and TV age, the cost-of-living crisis spirals to terrifying new levels by the day.

All the drawn-out Tory leadership battle has done is encourage Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to tear chunks out of one another while Labour’s Keir Starmer sits back and watches.

The BBC and the Government’s enemies have loved every second, knowing the contest is storing up soundbites that will come back to haunt the Tories in months and years to come.

It’s also going to make it harder for the winner to unify the party, though given the stakes could hardly be higher for the country, it is vital they find a way.

In an ideal world, this zombie contest would end now, MPs would be summoned from their sun loungers and Parliament would get back to work early.

Failing that, we pray Cabinet Office minister Kit Malthouse is right in claiming Government has been put on a war footing to allow the new PM to act swiftly to save households from the economic avalanche.

Busted flush

GLASS half-full types may have looked at the airline chaos, financial squeeze and baking temperatures this summer and seen a perfect opportunity to reacquaint themselves with Britain’s coastal resorts.

Lady Luck, however, appears to be holidaying elsewhere, with millions of staycationing Brits now being warned off swimming in the sea at 50 beaches because of hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage being dumped.

3

Treatment plants’ failure to process the sewage, which triggered the overflows, was blamed on heavy rainfall this week.

That rare outbreak of rain came, of course, on the back of weeks of a record heatwave that triggered droughts and saw half the country turned into a dustbowl and slapped with hosepipe bans.

So we’d like to ask a question of Ofwat, the blasé regulator which sets scandalously low bars for firms not only on sewage but also on wasted water:

Just what types of weather IS our leaking, creaking water network geared up for?

Deadly streets

“UNCLE Tom” O’Halloran was 87 and on a mobility scooter but was still trying to help those less fortunate by busking with his accordion to raise funds for Ukraine.

And yet his life was snuffed out in broad daylight by a coward with a knife, perhaps in a botched mugging attempt.

3

Disturbingly the unprovoked attack on Mr O’Halloran was the sixth murder on London’s streets in just four days.

In many ways, it is the most senseless.