In a curious way the decline of English rugby mirrors that of the Conservative party. Four years ago there was a spring in the step of both. England had trounced the All Blacks in the semi-final of the World Cup in Japan, and although they lost to South Africa in the final a week later there was a belief that the future was bright. As the Daily Telegraph summed it up in a headline, ‘England’s squad unity demonstrates cause for optimism’.

Four years on and England are anything but optimistic ahead of next month’s World Cup. Under new coach Steve Borthwick they have won just three of their nine matches this year, and on Saturday they were humiliated by Fiji at Twickenham in one of the greatest upsets in rugby union history. The Pacific Islanders (population 937,417) beat England (population 56.3m) 30-22 and a deserved victory it was, the visitors playing with an enterprise and verve that was beyond the capabilities of their hapless hosts.

According to the Mail on Sunday, England’s humbling ‘turned a once proud union into a laughing stock’ and consequently ‘they will travel to the World Cup as the butt of the jokes’.

Britain went to the polls six weeks after the 2019 Rugby World Cup, and the result was a landslide victory for the Conservatives. Boris Johnson’s party did to Labour what England had done to New Zealand in that never-to-be-forgotten semi-final. Their 80-seat majority was, boomed Boris, a ‘new dawn’ for the country and he promised Red Wall voters who had abandoned Labour for the Tories for the first time that he would ‘never take [their] support for granted’.

Johnson wasn’t able to keep his promise, and support for the Tories among Red Wall voters – as well as their traditional base – has drained away in the last four years. England rugby players know the feeling; they, too, have seen the faithful drift away and nearly 30,000 seats went unsold for the visit of the Fijians on Saturday. Nobody likes to align themselves with a laughing stock, which is also an apt description of the Conservative party.

The reasons for the decline are similar: bad management, poor strategy and mediocre people. Eddie Jones, the Australian coach who guided England to the 2019 World Cup should have been sacked in 2020 when it emerged he was moonlighting for a Japanese club instead of running the rule over young talent in the English domestic league. The RFU lacked the courage to fire Jones, even when the national team suffered an embarrassing 2022 Six Nations campaign, losing 3 of their 5 matches, including a record 32-15 thrashing at home to Ireland. Jones was eventually given the heave in December last year, after England were booed off the Twickenham pitch following a limp defeat to South Africa.

Unfortunately the RFU replaced Jones with Steve Borthwick, the rugby equivalent of selecting Liz Truss to succeed Johnson. Borthwick may have outlasted a lettuce, which Truss was famously unable to do during her short-lived tenure in No. 10, but the England head coach is likely to be gone by November if, as expected, they endure a wretched World Cup campaign; despite the fact England are in the easiest pool of the four, they will struggle to beat Argentina, Samoa and Japan on current form, though they should – fingers crossed – just about have the wherewithal to edge out Chile.

Borthwick lacks boldness and imagination, and he has no clear vision of where he is taking his team.

That will sound familiar to Tory voters. Like Borthwick, Rishi Sunak is a decent man but one who has been promoted above his station. The other trait they share is a habit of over-promising. In January Sunak made five pledges to the country and boasted that he would deliver on them and restore ‘optimism, hope, and pride’.

Borthwick, meanwhile, was also confidently stating his ambition for the year ahead, in his case ‘to produce a team that delivers. I think that’s what supporters want. I promise you I’ll lead in a real, authentic way. I love winning.’

To compound England’s misery, the favourites for the World Cup are France, who hammered Australia on Sunday and are playing with a flair and a ferocity that suggests they will win the trophy in front of their home fans in Paris on October 28.

Expect Emmanuel Macron to be in the stadium, smugger than ever. Can it get any worse for England rugby and the Tories?