Appearing not to be deranged is enough to mark someone as special in the Tory party - Euan McColm

It’s difficult to think of an easier question yet they found it so bloody difficult to answer.

The five contenders to be next leader of the Conservative Party - and, thus, Prime Minister - were asked during Friday night’s Channel 4 debate about the man they hope to replace.

Moderator Krishnan Guru-Murthy wondered whether they considered Boris Johnson an honest man. Given his colleagues’ decision to remove him from power because of his pathological inability to tell the truth, one might have expected the panel to zip through this perfectly straightforward question.

But they couldn’t help themselves. Of course, they couldn’t.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy hosts the debate with the candidates, Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Tom Tugendhat who are in the running for Prime Ministe facing questions from a studio audience of floating voters. Picture: Tom Nicholson/Shutterstock

The rising star of the right, Kemi Badenoch said that “sometimes” he was, while the current favourite among Tory members - those 160,000 people who’ll pick our next PM for us - Penny Mordaunt spoke of Johnson paying a price for “serious issues”. Former chancellor - and the current favourite among Conservative MPs - Rishi Sunak avoided a simple answer about Johnson, instead telling us that trust and honesty were part of the reason he’d resigned, and Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, explained the departing premier had been clear he made mistakes.

Only backbencher Tom Tugendhat felt able to reply, simply, “no”. His was the only answer to prompt applause from the studio audience, comprised of floating voters.

How miserable it all was that, after months of Johnsonian lies, evasion and prevarication, four of those who want his job felt unable - or were unwilling - to tell the unvarnished truth about him.

What this told us - or confirmed to us - about the Conservative Party was that it is desperately in need of a period in opposition, not just for the benefit of the country but in the interests of its own survival.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson departs 10 Downing Street, Westminster, London. Photo: James Manning/PA

There were two reasons why Johnson had to be deposed by colleagues. The first - and most important to the health of our democracy - was that his litany of lies and broken promises, and his disregard for parliamentary standards had severely damaged trust in our political leaders. We - voters, that is - are not as thick as Johnson believed and most of us would like a Prime Minister with at least some understanding of the importance of integrity.

The second reason - and this is a matter solely of importance to the Conservative Party - was that poll after poll has shown us that he was on course to lead his colleagues to electoral defeat. Where once he had been an asset, he is now a thwocking great liability.

His straight answer to that straight question should be enough on its own to see that Tugendhat wins this contest. Unfortunately for him, he remains a member of the reality-based community. Not only that, he also harbours dangerously centrist views.

But the Tories don’t want someone sensible. What they want, it seems, is a wing-nut.

If that’s so, then Truss would appear to be the obvious choice.

In advance of the debate, the Foreign Secretary’s backers spoke of her track record of delivery in government. She had the skills, the personal qualities and, crucially, the experience to make a first-class Prime Minister. But when it came to her moment in the spotlight, she fell apart.

Faced with an audience and some fairly straightforward questions, Truss was stilted and awkward and anything but Prime Ministerial. At times, she was so robotic that I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d malfunctioned and a fire had broken out at her elbow while her left eye popped out on a spring.

If you missed the debate and want to know just how awful Truss was consider this: after the debate, Johnson loyalists and - please - soon to be backbenchers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries raved about her performance. When that brace of buffoons is backing a candidate, sensible people should look elsewhere.

Polling of party members in advance of the debate showed Penny Mordaunt enjoying quite a lead over her colleagues. But, like Truss, she was remarkably poor under even the lightest pressure.

There were awkward moments for her around the matter of self-ID for trans people. She may be on record as repeating the mantra that “trans women are women” but since entering the leadership race has sought to rewrite history, characterising herself as a great champion of women’s sex-based rights. According to Mordaunt, she had intervened in the move towards self-ID to ensure that biological women retained specific rights.

It shouldn’t much matter where one stands in the discussion over balancing the rights of women and trans people for one to be able to take a view on Mordaunt’s performance. She was evasive and awkward and will have done nothing to impress either the trans people who previously considered her an ally or the gender critical feminists who maintain that single-sex - single biological sex - spaces must be preserved.

Poor showings by Truss and Mordaunt should be good news for Badenoch, who managed to get through the debate without seeming a complete weirdo. This, you may think, should not be regarded as much of an achievement but, in today’s Conservative Party, appearing not to be deranged is enough to mark someone as special.

But Badenoch remains an outside bet.

Which brings us to Rishi Sunak, who was - by and large - confident and polished. Of the five vying for the top job, he seemed the readiest for it.

Tory members buoyed by Sunak’s ability to make it through the debate without falling apart should show a little humility.

How depressing that the most plausible candidate to replace a lockdown-rule breaking Prime Minister is a politician also fined for breaking lockdown rules.

On Friday’s showing, getting rid of Boris Johnson will not be enough to save the Tories from defeat.

The next General Election is Labour’s to lose.