So, after 14 years, what have the Conservatives ever really done for us?

So farewell then, the Conservative government of 2010 to 2024 – and, with its likely demise only about 40 days away, this seems as good a moment as any to attempt an obituary.

After all, the first draft of history is what journalism is supposed to be all about. It does all seem a bit of a sleazy, Euro-obsessed, divisive and traumatic blur, though. The present chancellor boasts about substantial growth, the best foreign inward investment and millions of jobs created... but it’s also true that household living standards have hardly risen, we have record NHS waiting lists, trains that don’t run on time, sewage in the rivers and crumbling schools. As they say on the social media memes, if we set “how it started” against “how’s it going”, it doesn’t seem that the last decade and a half has achieved that much.

It started with David Cameron as prime minister, and the dearth of talent available by its terminal stages saw him brought back as foreign secretary. It started with a mission, if you’ll excuse the term, to fix the public finances, the mantra of “get the deficit down”, a drive for tax cuts, and the austerity programme of chancellor George Osborne.

It ended with the biggest national debt since the war, the highest tax burden since the 1950s, and chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s spending plans that imply even more severe (and unrealistic) real-terms cuts in funding for public services. And, of course, the Truss-Kwarteng mini-Budget along the way.

The Cameron administration famously had an aim to get net immigration down to the “tens of thousands” – it is now running at well over half a million, and only so-called “illegal” trafficking of refugees via the chaotic small boats trade is running in the tens of thousands. Cameron told his party to “stop banging on about Europe” and, despite the windmill on his roof, accept what he later derided as “the green crap” – and we know what eventually became of the environmental credentials of the party.

By 2015, the Tories warned about the “chaos” of a Labour government led by Ed Miliband relying on the Lib Dems (ironically) and the SNP, only to serve up a succession of the most crazy administrations in British history – Theresa May’s record-breaking Commons defeats on a bewildering variety of Brexit options; the last days of Johnson, when a boycott by his own MPs left him unable to form a government; and the Liz Truss mini-Budget.

Still, we should be fair. The Tories, like every opposition, wanted to clean up politics. Unfortunately this manifested as a backbencher viewing “tractor porn” in the chamber, naked Tory MPs kidnapped by “bad people” and multiple charges of sexual assault. None of this, of course, is to mention the national embarrassment that was the Partygate scandal. It was not known in 2010 exactly what damage the then cheerfully liberal and pro-Europe mayor of London would do to standards in public life – but Boris Johnson’s record speaks for itself.

By comparison, the early years of things were remarkably orderly – a full term of five years with no resignations on political grounds and low turnover of ministers.

That first administration was born in the difficult aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, and the Tory baby that popped out of the 2010 general election was somewhat underweight – unable to command a majority in the Commons on its own, it had to turn to its midwife, Nick Clegg, to turn a hung parliament into a stable administration with the Liberal Democrats.

The coalition, as it was christened, led by David Cameron, proved to be a far more robust infant than anyone expected; the formal coalition of two political parties with different philosophies proving far more durable than the internal coalitions that Cameron, May and Sunak would later fail to manage.

The middle-to-later years of the Conservative government were of course dominated by three crises: Brexit, the Covid pandemic, and the energy price spike caused by the war in Ukraine. Each, oddly, followed closely after the others. It’s fair to say that all were of unprecedented scale in their different ways; and that the fact that none was particularly well-managed has to be set in that context.

The stories are long and complex, and it’s unnecessary to relive the nightmares. It is sufficient to say that the British system of government managed to survive relatively unscathed – but the UK economy much less so, and with profound political reverberations that are about to be felt at the election.

Johnson will be remembered for the world-beating vaccine rollout and the early support for Ukraine. Sunak, as chancellor, deserves credit for his Covid furlough scheme. And Truss, much maligned, did go against her fundamentalist instincts to subsidise household gas and electricity bills. But you could argue any competent leader in any party would have done much the same.

As the nation readies itself to pass judgement on the past 14-and-a-bit years, Sunak and his colleagues must answer the Pythonesque question: “What have the Tories ever done for us?”

With the monumental exception of Brexit (still getting mixed reviews), not much springs to mind as abiding achievements. Michael Gove would no doubt volunteer his education reforms, but they remain controversial, and arguably only built on foundations laid under the Blair administration. There was equal marriage – albeit opposed by the bulk of Cameron’s administration – which will stand the test of time.

But on housing, health and, more unexpectedly, the economy and defence, the Tory legacy doesn’t look particularly impressive, and the chaos of the endless leadership challenges, cronyistic frauds and sleazy sex scandals (albeit not confined to the Tories) pollutes some otherwise sound achievements.

Like a man splashing out on a sports car in his midlife crisis, Johnson delivered an unlikely moment of political euphoria in December 2019 with a stunning election win. We know now, of course, that it was based on a deluded false prospectus – getting Brexit “done”; “levelling up” for the left behind red wall; “building back better”. He gave the 2010-24 government the only “-ism” it had: the unworthy doctrine of “cakeism”. It was a lie – we were being defrauded, but chose to believe otherwise.

Now, in its very twilight moments, we can see how an enfeebled and sometimes confused governing party has run out of talent and ideas, and has forgotten what it is for. Some of its main “stars” – Hunt, Gove, Cameron – are leftovers from an earlier age; and it’s hard to see where the next winning leader will come from – Braverman? Badenoch? Mordaunt?

Calling an election when 20 points behind in the polls is, without being gross, a last act of kamikaze – irrational, and a final attempt to deny and defy reality. It’s over.