Who’d have thought just one month ago, that by mid-October, Rishi Sunak would be the bookies’ favourite for next PM.
Even the most loyal Liz Truss supporters would accept that recent weeks have been, to put it mildly, chaotic. And it seems that Sunak might end up a chief beneficiary of that chaos.
It might feel like ancient history now, but Sunak was defeated by Truss in the Tory leadership election at the beginning of last month. Yet according to the Telegraph’s live odds tracker his chances of being the next PM have soared from around 16% to just under 40% in recent days.
For understandable reasons however, he’ll be wary of Jeremy Hunt. The new chancellor, having just reversed a number of Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget policies, exudes calm and is popular amongst sections of the commentariat. Just days ago the tracker had his chances as less than 5%; now it’s at 23%.
Hunt has stood twice before for the leadership and is clearly ambitious. He’ll know that if he is seen to be steadying the ship following the recent storms he’ll stand a great chance… at that chance might come very soon indeed.
As for Penny Mordaunt, odds on the former “dark horse” of the Tory leadership campaign succeeding Truss are 15/2, according to the odds checker average. At present, the leader of the House of Commons under Truss is still throwing her weight behind the beleaguered PM: she defended her against scathing MPs in a Commons session just this afternoon and, this morning, wrote an article in The Daily Telegraph urging the party to “work with” Truss and her new chancellor. “Our country needs stability, not a soap opera,” she reasoned.
But if rumours about Truss’s visit to Sir Graham Brady this afternoon are true, Mordaunt might have underestimated just how much even politicians are suckers for a good soap opera.
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