Britain is entering a profound social emergency. Why is nobody acting like it? | John Harris

We are entering an era of mass fuel poverty and warm banks' - and complacent leaders have left a dangerous political vacuum

The surreal, often absurd Conservative leadership election meanders on. Both candidates frantically float ideas for disrupting everything from university term dates to doctors' pensions, while the Sunday Telegraph endorses Liz Truss as the first truly philosophy-driven leader since Margaret Thatcher", and Rishi Sunak stoically insists that he loves dancing. But we all know the gravity of the crisis that is now enveloping us, and it makes the vanities of their battle seem like some strange hallucination related to the summer's stifling heat.

By the autumn, the victor - Truss, in all likelihood - may well be still trying to convince us that they are leading a national sprint towards sunlit uplands that only they can see. But the game is already up: the immediate future will be defined by skyrocketing energy prices, economic woe and a profound social emergency - and power will be a grinding matter of crisis management.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist