Tories are still engaged in factional bickering despite historic battering… they need to pull themselves together

HOW long will it take for the Tories to ­realise voters are repulsed by their ­chaotic civil wars?

It was a crucial factor behind the party’s historic battering last week.

Yet here they are, in abject opposition, still engaged in factional bickering.

Too many seem far keener on continuing the endless psychodrama and jockeying for position than on forming a credible alternative Government.

Kemi Badenoch is a strong contender for leader.

Even she chose the first post-election shadow cabinet meeting to ignite a row over Rishi Sunak’s “disastrous” campaign . . . and it was immediately leaked, as Tory Cabinet meetings invariably were.

It is perhaps unfair to compare them with a united Labour Party cheerfully enjoying its honeymoon period after a landslide victory — albeit so far untested by events.

But voters will do so anyway.

And the Tories look a rabble.

Ex-Home Secretary James Cleverly says that in power they “were too often preoccupied with infighting . . . too often divided”.

Quite so.

Are the others listening? Or too busy drafting the next snarky Tweet or WhatsApp rant?

For their sake and Britain’s they need to pull themselves together.

Prisons peril

OUR prisons are crumbling cesspits which are scandalously overcrowded.

The entire system is full to the brim.

But Labour need to be exceptionally careful over freeing inmates early — or sending fewer to jail.

We greatly admire new Prisons Minister James Timpson, a boss who made a point of giving ex-cons jobs when ­others would not.

He has almost entirely positive experiences with them.

But when he says only a third of our current inmates should be behind bars, we suspect he has rose-tinted specs on.

Domestic Abuse Commissioner Nicole Jacobs is warning that if wife-beaters are let loose, their terrified victims will “pay the price”.

Some of those abusers are inside for lesser crimes.

And what about, say, serial burglars who routinely destroy lives?

They may not be violent, or sex predators.

But why would anyone want them freed early to inflict further misery on the innocent?

Many lags are more deserving of hard time than Mr Timpson will admit.

And the public deserve to live their law-abiding lives free from them.

Our heroes

THEY’VE only gone and done it!

Massive congrats to England’s heroes and to Gareth Southgate in making our second Euros final in three years.

Our lads have had their critics.

But they came up against real class in the Dutch — and still came through.

Now for mighty Spain.

Give ’em el, lads! Bring that trophy home.