The fact that the Conservative leadership contest has got to this point amazes me, yet also doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

July 5 2024 was a sobering day for the party and left them at a fork in the road.

One path was a rocky one and led towards the right. It represented a realisation that the failures of the last five years had been as a result of not been right-wing enough and that the path to redemption led to recapturing votes lost to Reform.

The second path was a moderate one, one they had travelled before in 2005, and promised a return to the centre right in an attempt to reclaim the swathes of votes lost to the Liberal Democrats and Labour.

Members of the Conservative Party deserved the chance to contribute to a discussion on the party’s course. But they were robbed of that by an unfathomable feat of stupidity that caused James Cleverly to lose and are now faced with two right-wing candidates of which only one is a credible option: Kemi Badenoch.

At times Badenoch impresses. She is bright, she is articulate with a background credible enough to support her claims of being ready to lead her party in opposition.

She showed this in the recent leadership debate, as she demonstrated a knack for making points and backing them up confidently. If she could be consistent in this, she would be a shoo in, but history tells us she isn’t.

Too often in politics we incorrectly label politicians as “straight-talkers” when what we really should be doing is describing their incredible ability to blather on incoherently, unsure of the next sentence to come out of their mouths.

Badenoch falls into this camp. Her ability to too often get drawn into nonsensical arguments such as who can use a public toilet prevents her from getting her message across on important policy – something that she is otherwise capable of doing. She has in the past been labelled as Mrs T, but nobody knows for sure if that T is a reference to Thatcher or Truss.

Even in recent weeks, at a time when you would expect her to be at her most cautious, this “excellent communicator” has regularly had to clarify what she was going on about. Whether she was talking about maternity pay or civil servants being sent to prison, she has time and again demonstrated her talk first, think later approach.

These faults would make her an underdog in an ordinary leadership race but by some extraordinary twist of fate, she has been left facing Robert Jenrick.

In Jenrick, the Conservative Party are left with the option of an MP who quit his previous ministerial role when the going got tough and is remembered for nothing more than painting over a Disney mural that he feared would be too comforting to distressed children.

In Jenrick, the Conservative Party are left with the option of an MP who makes baseless claims about special forces soldiers to further his own ends.

In Jenrick, the Conservative Party are left with an MP so desperate to find a reason to exist that he feels the need to drone on relentlessly about the ECHR in an attempt to manufacture a new Brexit.

Throughout the leadership contest, Jenrick has argued vaguely about terms such as culture, gender and wokeness without really providing the issue let alone offering a path to solving it.

Ambiguous promises of “fixing the NHS” or “spending on defence” are not sound plans for success and his constant telling audiences what it is he thinks they want to hear smacks of a man with no substance.

Our parliamentary democracy relies heavily on the existence of a credible opposition capable of holding power to account. Nothing in Jenrick’s parliamentary career or leadership bid suggests that he is the person to do this.

Arguably, with a government in possession of a majority as big as Labours, the existence of a professional, serious opposition has never been more important.

Badenoch at her best has proved herself capable being that leader, no more so than in this week’s demolition job in her debate with Jenrick.

Whilst her propensity for stupidity is undoubtedly a risk, Robert Jenrick being the alternative means that it is a risk the Conservative Party have no choice other than to take.