I'm starting to wonder if either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak really wants to win the leadership of the Conservative Party and the tenancy of Number 10 next month – it looks like the ultimate poisoned chalice.

There is no doubt the country is heading for the worst recession since the mid-1970s – and an economic slump, if not a technical recession, that could well linger until the end of the decade.

This would not be a British phenomenon. It would be a worldwide slump. All that governments in individual countries will be able to do is manage the troughs and hopefully protect the most vulnerable from the worst excesses of the economic crisis.

This means whoever wins next month – and if the polls of Conservative members are right, it will be Ms Truss – will take over the leadership of a country whose citizens are getting poorer with little hope of turning things around in the short term.

I know Ms Truss was trying the Jim Callaghan "I see no crisis" approach when asked about the Bank of England's recession forecast.

Her response that "We're talking ourselves into a recession" seemed to me like the actions of an eight-year-old who sticks their fingers in their ears when warned about eating too many sweets and getting a tummy ache!

It seems unlikely she actually thinks that. It was a comment designed to appeal to the 150,000 Tory Party members who have a vote and appear to be oblivious to the fears of the majority of the population if recent opinion polls are to be believed.

Most observers seem convinced that whatever is said during this strange campaign, whoever wins will have to push billions of pounds into supporting the poorest households this autumn.

Apparently, Tory Party members don't want to hear that – although an opinion poll this week suggested that two-thirds of Conservative voters actually preferred Sir Keir Starmer's proposals to ease the energy crisis over anything promised by either Ms Truss or Mr Sunak.

The leadership race does appear to be becoming more and more disconnected from the issues facing the vast majority of the British public.

It is becoming more and more concentrated on the 0.3% of voters who are members of the Conservative Party. And it is clear that the candidates' focus groups are convinced that the membership has become more and more right-wing and intolerant of dissenting views over the past two decades.

This is not a phenomenon I've noticed in my conversations with the region's MPs and Conservative councillors, or the party members that I know personally – but judging by the emphasis being placed on issues like immigration, minority rights and talk of a "war on woke", I can only assume that the focus groups are giving a different message.

Whatever is said in the weeks leading up to the leadership election, once the new Prime Minister is confirmed all these issues will be ditched and it'll be all hands on deck to ease the economic crisis.

With inflation in double digits for the first time in 30 years, living standards falling at their fastest since 1976, and millions of households living in genuine fear of not being able to pay their bills, whoever the new PM is will have better things to worry about than the number of immigrants in the Dover Straits, the definition of male and female, and how "woke" civil servants are.

The one thing both candidates – and especially Ms Truss – do need to remember is that while their focus may very quickly turn to the serious business of governing a country in the middle of the worst recession for 50 years, their opponents won't forget their campaigning over the last six weeks.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats will have built up a video library of some of the more bizarre comments aimed at currying favour with the more robust Tory members – and will remind the British electorate of them time and again once the starting gun is fired for the next General Election.