The game’s afoot in frantic race to enter Number 10

Rafa Nadal! Ben Stokes! Sarina Wiegman! Where are your boys and girls now? Even the Gosden-Dettori soap opera (He loves me! He loves me not! He loves me!) pales in comparison.

For sheer outrageous drama – and betting potential – you can’t beat the sport of politics at its best and barmiest. This has been the barmiest political week Britain has seen in living memory. And it’s not over yet.

This is what we think we know in betting terms: Boris Johnson will cease to be prime minister some time in 2022 – write off bets that he will hang on for longer – and he will be succeeded by the next leader of the Conservative Party, so you can write off bets on Keir Starmer being next PM, too.

It has been obvious for six months to everyone except Johnson and a few slightly deranged loyalists that he was a busted flush. But no one knew how, when and who might be next.

I do feel slightly sorry that he has apparently given up thoughts of leading Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nadine ‘Mad Nad’ Dorries and the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard (“are you sure this is wise, sir?”) down Whitehall to stage a Trumpian assault on parliament.

Though, bless him, he was still appointing cabinet ministers yesterday morning and finding dafties to join him in the bunker.
Meanwhile, there was turmoil among punters. Penny Mordaunt had become favourite to replace Johnson after Rishi Sunak, the now
ex-chancellor, fell out of favour when his wife’s financial arrangements became public.

Mordaunt, not even in the cabinet, was always an odd front-runner but no one knew anything to her discredit.

She was displaced yesterday, first by a resurgent Sunak and then Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, who again has few known minuses but sounds impressive. Both Mordaunt and Wallace have armed forces backgrounds, a big plus in 2020s politics.

Before wading into this jumpy market, punters need to know the rules. Prospective runners need eight Tory MPs to nominate them. There is then an exhaustive ballot to whittle a possible 20 candidates down to two.

It then goes to the party’s members across Britain, about 100,000 of them with an average age not much lower.

But these rules could yet change. Sir John Major suggested yesterday that MPs should choose the leader and Tory members then ratify the decision. This would produce a more informed choice but it is unhelpful to the calculations.

As things stand the aspirants have to appeal to two totally different electorates: MPs who have an overriding interest in holding their seats and a political base whose interest may be their own interests.

It worked in 2019 when the politicians, many of them with clothes pegs on their noses, bowed to Johnson’s undoubted skills as a vote-getter, overlooking the flaws in his attention span and moral compass. How do they get it right this time, seeking the fourth Tory leader in six years?

Wallace – who has topped two polls among party members – and Mordaunt, will both have to remedy their limited CVs by finding a top campaign team and articulating a compelling vision to appeal to both groups.

But hardly anyone in the top nine in the betting has much more experience. Sunak apart, only Michael Gove and Dominic Raab – in the cabinet that existed until this week – had any public profile at all, favourable or not. And Gove and Raab are apparent non-runners.

All the main contenders are younger than 56-year-old Johnson. And one of his successes was marginalising all opposition – Remainers, unless they recanted or shut up, potential enemies, class acts of every kind were banished to make way for numpties, Nadine Dorries and nodding donkeys.

Of the other seven expected to declare, three are perceived as a little too anxious to get to Number 10 – Jeremy Hunt, in exile since he lost to Johnson three years ago, in particular.

Ditto Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, who has leapt on a plane home from Indonesia. And Nadhim Zahawi, still chancellor last time my phone pinged, is also said to have been on manoeuvres, but he has had a weird week; promoted by Johnson one day, telling him to go the next. And his considerable wealth is already a subject of media interest.

The Brexit hardliner Steve Baker would be a sectional candidate of the Europhobe and climate-change sceptical right; Tom Tugendhat, who has been a lieutenant-colonel but not a minister, would appeal to the enfeebled consensual left.

And “so what do we do to be saved?” as an old Irish colleague of mine used to ask in any crisis. Betting on the next leader is almost always a mug’s game when there is no vacancy – unless you spot a 250-1 up-and-comer no one else has noticed. Normally it’s easier when the game’s afoot.

This one is like an old-fashioned Grand National and I think I can narrow it down to three. Despite being little known outside the defence establishment Wallace clearly has his supporters inside Westminster, while Sunak at 9-2 is tempting if he can shrug off the downside of his riches and can make an attractive offer other than years of austerity. He could be a comeback kid.

I think there may also be value in Sajid Javid, a best-priced 10-1, whose heartfelt resignation speech the other day gave him the moral high ground if he can build on that and be perceived as Mr Clean.

Neither Javid nor Wallace could match Sunak as the telegenic candidate though. Mordaunt would beat the lot.

Or, in a week when the improbable has been normal and the impossible quite thinkable, you could always get 500-1 about Matt Hancock or 1000-1 Mad Nad.

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