Low economic growth is a slow-burning crisis for Britain

It must arrest its economic decline

Conservative mps’ half-hearted vote to endorse Boris Johnson as prime minister, on June 6th, betrayed how deeply Britain’s ruling party fails to confront hard choices. A defeat for Mr Johnson would have ushered in a new government, with a chance to prove itself before the next election. A resounding victory would have given him a fresh mandate to show that he had put his transgressions behind him. The irresolute blow the rebels inflicted leaves Britain in the hands of a washed-up cabinet mouthing grandiloquent promises it cannot honour.

This newspaper has long argued that Mr Johnson ought to have resigned for lying repeatedly to Parliament about whether he broke his own laws. But hypocrisy and deceit do not begin to capture the wider problem that he and his country face. Britain is stuck in a 15-year rut. It likes to think of itself as a dynamic, free-market place, but its economy lags behind much of the rich world. There is plenty of speechifying about growth, and no shortage of ideas about how to turn the country round. But the mettle and strategic thinking that reform requires are absent—another instance of Tories ducking hard choices.