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

Tory rule has been characterised by the exactly the sort of chaos the party warned its opponents would cause, writes Sean O’Grady

Rishi Sunak in his rain-soaked announcement of the election (PA )

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.