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.

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 .