The Tories' inglorious leadership fight ought to fill Labour with joy

The Duke of Wellington, surveying his troops, said he didn't know what effect the spectacle would have on the enemy, "but, by God, they frighten me". What's left of the serious elements of the Conservative party are frightened as they view the battlefield ahead - and they don't expect to win a Waterloo.

- Polly Toynbee

"If the Tories lose the next election, they may well be out of power for a generation," warns the Spectator's political editor, James Forsyth. The progressive forces of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens would bring in electoral reform and voting at 16. Even under a single transferable vote system, according to Forsyth, the Tories would only have won twice since the second world war, and not even Margaret Thatcher could have governed on her own.

That frightener is designed to dragoon Tory party members into Rishi Sunak's camp, as the safer pair of hands. For outsiders, the pleasure of this campaign is watching the best lines of attack come from the contestants. Safe, hisses Liz Truss - or more of the same, business-as-usual, failed economics that led us here?

The Sunak camp responds by blowing up her plan for a gigantic £30bn ($36bn) tax cut on day one (the mysterious alchemy of which would generate golden growth), axing green levies from energy bills and, above all, "deregulation" (unspecified).