IT IS the election nobody cares about, one commentator facetiously said of the contest for the leadership of the Conservative Party, which got under way this week. He may be right. But we ought to care, because the outcome is important to the future of democracy.

Let me stick my neck out. Despite the recent Labour landslide, and the humiliation for Tories of the slashing of Boris Johnson’s 365 majority to just 121 seats, I an not convinced that this is a realignment of British politics.

Reform UK will last only until its leader, Nigel Farage, gets bored; for he holds it together through personal charisma rather than policy coherence. The Liberal Democrats, now looking strong with 72 seats, historically ebb and flow in opposition to the fortunes of other parties and the vagaries of the electoral system. So, the Conservatives, depleted though they may be, need to embody a critical Opposition to this Labour Government.

The start of the Conservatives’ leadership campaign is not encouraging. The centrist candidates offer what W. S. Gilbert calls a bald and unconvincing narrative, with platitudinous calls for self-discipline (James Cleverly), or competence (Mel Stride), while Tom Tugendhat — a One Nation anti-Brexiteer, who previously argued that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights would jeopardise peace in Northern Ireland — has done a desperate about-face to appeal to the Tory Right.

The Right have their own problems. Dame Priti Patel, the least popular of the candidates, pollsters say, has declared that she will put “unity before personal vendetta, country before party, and delivery before self-interest” — in vivid contradistinction to her own divisive track record in government.

Robert Jenrick — once such an undistinguished centrist that his detractors called him Robert Generic — has lurched so far right that he has hijacked so many of the supporters of Suella Braverman that she has pulled out of the race. “I’ve been branded mad, bad ,and dangerous,” she said, going on to say that the Tory Party did not want to hear what she had to offer: a platform extreme enough to entice Reform voters back into the Tory fold.

So, the dilemma now is: should a new Tory leader move to the right to attract Reform voters, or to the left to win back those disillusioned Tories who voted Lib Dem?

What the bookies’ favourite, Kemi Badenoch, understands is that it is not enough for the party to rediscover self-discipline and unity. They, together with competence and decency, are the sine qua non if the Tories are to recover the trust of the electorate. The task ahead is not just about strategy. It is about values: ladders for the aspiring, hard work and personal responsibility, trading risk for reward, but also shared endeavour, to bind communities up and down the land.

Whether Ms Badenoch is the person to do that binding is another matter. She is so combative and confrontational that it has been said that “Kemi Badenoch could start a fight in an empty room.” Yet the task that she has perceptively set herself requires a leader who combines inspiring vision with skilful diplomacy.

There is a great lesson to be learned from this massive electoral humiliation. But, so far, the Tories have not learned it, primarily because they cannot agree what that lesson is.