Ben Lowry: There is no sign of a Tory who sees the problems facing unionists in Northern Ireland

How many of the you would be more likely to vote Conservative?

At first a single hand went up, then a handful more. “Well,” the Channel Four presenter said, “that tells you something.”

It did make me wonder if it told me ‘something’, but not the thing that perhaps Mr Guru-Murthy seemed to have in mind.

It made me wonder about the balance of audience and indeed of the C4 forum. Mr Guru-Murthy had asked a previous question of the crowd, that got a similarly lukewarm response and also appeared to reflect badly on the all-Tory political platform.

One of the only moments any of the candidates got applause was when Tom Tugendhat answered a straight ‘no’ when they were all asked if they thought Boris Johnson was honest.

During the debate all of the questions from the audience — such as on the environment, health and help for carers — related to issues on which politicians on the left of the political spectrum poll well. This invited, and often got, answers that would please the left.

Not a question on topics on which politicians on the right of the spectrum poll well — such as on taxes, on law and order, on defence, or on reclaiming sovereignty (a matter that was of such appeal to voters in 2019 that it brought the Tories swathes of votes and seats in traditionally Labour parts of England).

And not a single question on the Northern Ireland Protocol, one of the thorniest political challenges facing the next prime minister.

That latter omission is not merely a sign of possible bias in the debate themes, away from issues that are of concern to voters on the right of the spectrum, but also perhaps a reflection of a public lack of interest in Northern Ireland.

I have been reading newspapers since the 1980s and an early thing I learned about the industry was that papers that put NI on their front page saw sales fall — and thus in England many of the tabloids never led on an Ulster story and even some of the more sales-oriented broadsheets avoided it.

What the candidates think about the NI Protocol is of major significance to the Union.

As our political editor Henry McDonald has been writing all week, the bill to give the UK power to overhaul the Irish Sea border will easily get through the House of Commons and, even if delayed by the House of Lords, will become law.

The biggest obstacle to such an outcome is a new prime minister who lacks enthusiasm for the bill. As another Henry (the Tory commentator Henry Hill) has explained, the candidates cannot now jettison the legislation without seeming weak towards Brussels, which none of them want to seem.

The problem would come if they sent out immediate signals to the EU that they wanted a deal on undemanding terms, and so a swift agreement was reached, in which the UK talked up cosmetic concessions from the EU on checks, with the underlying constitutional damage to NI not merely unchanged, but without even UK legislation that can retreat from it at a later date (if the Irish Sea border becomes even deeper due to Britain and Europe pulling further apart politically and economically).

The DUP is now in a grave dilemma as to how to proceed politically.

There is little doubt that, as Jim Allister says, NI will be separated from GB in very troubling ways on trade even if the bill passes.

On the other hand, as other influential (and sympathetic to unionist) voices are saying in London, the bill is about as good as it is likely to get for unionists — and it might not even come to be.

My own feeling after last night’s debate is that Rishi Sunak and Tom Tugendhat remain the most impressive of the five candidates. Kemi Badenoch was good as a hitherto unknown candidate.

Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss did not let themselves down.

None of the five has the presence and ability of Boris Johnson. And while I never thought him a suitable PM, it was disagreeable to watch how they all, in their own ways, cruelly dismissed the man who remains their party leader.

But Tugendhat and Sunak have never seemed much bothered by the Irish Sea border, and Mordaunt has no track record against it either.

Only Truss seems to have, and yet it was not clear last night that she was the sort of very strong, very able leader that the UK needs just now on a range of serious issues.

Nor that she, or any of her colleagues, have remotely grasped that the problems facing unionism now go far beyond the Northern Ireland Protocol.

An immense problem, for example, is that there is no culture of putting in secretaries of state who have a clue about NI, or the multi pronged assaults on the Union here. Shailesh Vara, the latest appointment, seems to be no exception to this trend of poorly informed incoming NI secretaries, who are then beholden to the Northern Ireland Office (NIO).

And while there has, it seems, be a slight retreat from the NIO culture of weakness and neutrality in the face of Dublin-helped nationalist demands, with the NIO now, for example, openly criticising the protocol, there is nothing like the root and branch reform that is needed.

A serious change of political culture is urgently required to counter influential Tory MPs on Northern Ireland such as Simon Hoare, the chair of the NI Affairs Committee who can be relied upon to jump to the defence of every nationalist demand, and was yesterday attacking the pro unionist Lord Frost.

I see no sign that any one of the five people on stage last night has the inclination or knowledge to tackle these big problems facing NI unionism.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor

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