How damaging has Tory leadership contest been to the party?

Analysis: slurs traded between Truss and Sunak camps look hard to live down, though voters may have bigger worries

It is not unusual for elections to be described as the dirtiest ever", but the current Conservative leadership contest has been so fractious that for once the description may be true.

On Sunday, when the Conservative MP Greg Hands claimed in a Times Radio interview that a lot of restraint" had been shown by the two campaigns, the presenter, the former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, could not conceal her disbelief. It was more blood and thunder and eye-gouging", she responded.