Kemi has dexterity to carve out a clear agenda and sell it

IT feels like a political lifetime but it's less than four weeks Conservatives since the were in office. How quickly the aura of power vanishes.

- Stephen Pollard

But the huge Conservative majority in 2019 followed by a Labour landslide in July shows how volatile today's voters are.

What the Tories do now and how they rebuild does matter not least because it's all the more important that a government with such an enormous majority should be properly scrutinised.

Over the next few months the six candidates will set out their stalls. As they contemplate how to revive the party and its appeal, they should study what happened to their Canadian counterparts. In 2015 Liberal Party (equivalent to Labour) won a decisive victory under Justin Trudeau, and the Conservative Party was cast out into irrelevance - where they stayed for nearly seven years.

That is a fate that awaits our own Conservative Party if it gets this wrong.

Two years ago, however, the Canadian Conservatives elected Pierre Poilievre as leader and everything changed. Polls show the party is now heading to power with a thumping majority. The secret of Poilievre's success is simple: he has gone back to first principles and is focused on explaining why they are in voters' interests. Everything emanates from that - including what the party can offer voters.