Beware the invisible blob in this grotesque Dickensian reality show Marina Hyde

Nothing could possibly be longer than this Conservative leadership race – not even the final minute of your washing machine cycle.

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Every promise made in it should be treated with the same deference you’d reserve for the claim that the tab closure on a cardboard cereal box “seals in freshness”. The contest resembles a Dickensian reality show, in which two grotesques compete to run the workhouse, simply refusing to be thrown offcourse by the increasingly desperate entreaties of their paupers. Who, as a mark of lavishly sarcastic respect, are these days referred to as “clients”.

The hustings now take place at a pitch only 75-yearold sociopaths can hear, so I’m afraid I don’t know whether bubbly detention centre redcoat Liz Truss has promised to “look again” at bringing back the poor laws, though I am enjoying the doomed efforts of the Sunak campaign to insist that their guy gets it. “For too long, water hasn’t had the attention it deserves,” burbled Rishi , on the same day the Northern Echo ran an aerial photo of the huge swimming pool complex Sunak is building at his constituency home in Yorkshire , under an authority that announced a hosepipe ban that morning .