All we need now is for Boris Johnson to praise Mark Field, the government-minister-cum-self-appointed-close-protection-officer who thought the best way to deal with a peaceful distributor of leaflets was to ram her into a pillar and grab her by the neck. If Johnson lauds Field as “my kind of guy”, then the already long list of similarities between Britain’s near-certain next prime minister and Donald Trump will get longer still. Compiling that list might once have been an amusing parlour game for politics nerds; now it is essential preparation for what is to come.

Not one of the candidates came away from Tuesday’s debate looking ready to lead

Vince Cable, the other party leader stepping down this summer, looks like a man ready to hand over. In the Twickenham home he has lived in for 45 years, a table is covered with piles of notes and clippings from the Financial Times – “horizontal filing,” he calls it – research for a new book he is working on. It is a study of how major politicians “have changed the way we do economics”, from Alexander Hamilton to Margaret Thatcher and, although he has not made a final decision on this – because who knows how the story will end? – Donald Trump. He will soon have more time for that project. Unlike Theresa May, the 76-year-old leader of the Liberal Democrats did not have to be dragged from politics’ front line. It was his decision.

Vince Cable, the other party leader stepping down this summer, looks like a man ready to hand over. In the Twickenham home he has lived in for 45 years, a table is covered with piles of notes and clippings from the Financial Times – “horizontal filing,” he calls it – research for a new book he is working on. It is a study of how major politicians “have changed the way we do economics”, from Alexander Hamilton to Margaret Thatcher and, although he has not made a final decision on this – because who knows how the story will end? – Donald Trump. He will soon have more time for that project. Unlike Theresa May, the 76-year-old leader of the Liberal Democrats did not have to be dragged from politics’ front line. It was his decision.

Strange to say this of a country with a Tory government, but Britain lacks a conservative party. There are instead two revolutionary parties of the right, firmly set on a path that could be described as nationalist or populist. But it is avowedly not conservative. And now they are locked in a struggle that is dragging the older, larger party ever further from the values that are supposed to define it.