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As if Brexit hadn’t already tarnished the Conservative Party’s reputation enough, this summer’s leadership race has compounded the damage. In a remarkable spectacle, the contenders spent

weeks falling over themselves to confess their Party’s mistakes and promised to throw money at the problems they created in government. It was as if we were watching contenders for

leadership of the opposition.   The Tories will find it harder to talk of Labour’s ‘magic money tree’ after all the spending pledges the candidates have bandied around; especially as Boris

Johnson and Jeremy Hunt flirt recklessly with a no-deal Brexit — which they plan to mitigate using the golden pot of money at the end of the rainbow. Warnings about the damage that Corbyn

and McDonnell will do to our economy are losing their impact by the day.  This has prompted ‘fiscal’ Philip Hammond to challenge the two final candidates over their spending plans for a

no-deal Brexit, which involves spending the £26bn ‘headroom’ set aside to mitigate the consequences. That headroom is not a magic pot of money just waiting to be spent, but the difference

between the limit Hammond set for the Budget deficit next year and how big the Office for Budget Responsibility believes it will be. The Chancellor quite rightly pointed out that the

so-called ‘headroom’ will only exist if there is an ‘orderly transition’, if not “it will all be needed to plug the hole a no-deal Brexit will make in the public finances”. This should be

obvious, but in a Conservative Party so enraptured by Brexit mania that it has become economically illiterate, this common sense seems to fall on deaf ears. A no-deal Brexit means severing

the EU treaties overnight. The UK’s entire framework for trade with the EU and the world would be demolished in an instant. From having the most sophisticated system of barrier free trade

with the EU, and a range of FTA’s with our global partners, we would downgrade to the most basic foundation for trade possible for a WTO member.  The vast majority of evidence points to very

severe economic consequences for the UK that would likely lead to political turbulence. What we can say for sure is that the consequences would be difficult to predict, and not easily

managed by the government. The so-called fiscal ‘headroom’ could disappear very quickly indeed. In a tweet yesterday, Jeremy Hunt said: “We spent just over £1 trillion bailing out the banks

after the financial crisis. So if we did it for the bankers then why wouldn’t we do it what is needed for our fishermen and our farmers now?” which sums up the madness currently enrapturing

the Party. One of the two contenders to become leader of the self-professed Party of business and economic competence is proposing ‘bail outs’ for farmers and fishermen to alleviate the

damage done by a policy he could willingly implement. The analogy just accentuates the insanity. Bailing out the banks was an emergency response to a global economic crisis. Financial aid

for farmers and fisherman would be panic spending to nurse a self-inflicted wound caused by a total failure of diplomacy and governance on the Tory Party’s watch. Boris Johnson seems even

keener on a no-deal Brexit and, worryingly, is utterly complacent about the potential impact, saying it would be “very, very small”. This presumption isn’t based on evidence or common sense,

but Trumpian levels of flippancy and faux optimism. This overconfidence has led the front-runner to make a series of big money promises for public services, infrastructure and tax cuts.

Meanwhile, Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has questioned the reliance on the £26bn “war chest”. He pointed out that the figure was a one-year target “so can’t

fund permanent tax cuts/spending increases” and that spending it would just mean more borrowing. Furthermore, the estimated size of the fiscal headroom may be revised down because of the

knock-on effect of the global economic slowdown.  For a Party the prides itself on sound economic management and fiscal prudence, none of this should need explaining. But as Brexit dominates

all, never has the Conservative Party’s idea of itself seemed so wide of the mark.