We open our Michael Gove/Jeremy Hunt/Sajid Javid/Boris Johnson Next Tory Leader run-offs with the one-time Brexiteering joint leadership ticket put head-to-head.
We have put Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid and Boris Johnson up against each other to get the view of our members’ panel.
Mordaunt – like Patel before her – is effective, ambitious, and keenly aware that many Conservative voters are not natural fans of aid spending.
If, that is, you don’t count “Other”, which comes ahead of the Home Secretary but behind the two front-runners.
Each monthly answer to this question since the last election has found that over half the respondents want a new leader in place to contest the next one.
Readers will see that it is all plain sailing for the plan reportedly being cooked up by “Tory grandees”.
They argue that even if May doesn’t deliver a clean outcome, the priority must be to ensure that the Article 50 timetable is met.
The longer the delay in making a decision, the longer it will take for an alternative to be ready.
The survey went out as Javid replaced Rudd, and he has bounced up to become the only other person polled who gets into double figures.
That’s four Cabinet Ministers gone in less than a year since the election – Michael Fallon, Priti Patel, Damian Green…and now the Home Secretary.
I want to be very clear that the threats to May are only coming from one wing of the Party, and aren’t shared by the vast majority of Conservative MPs.
The changes in the ratings of the top three are almost unchanged, another tribute to the consistency of the poll.
Is he adapting to get things done? Might he be adjusting to life as an emergent elder statesman? Or could it all be about leadership ambition? His reinvention continues.
Sooner or later, it will hold a leadership contest in which its members will actually get to decide the winner – and perhaps our next Prime Minister.
Plus: Henry Bolton, secret LibDem agent. (Or not.) Penny Mordaunt, next Tory leader. (Or not.) British communists surprise us. (Or don’t.) And: my CNN joy.
Sooner or later, it will hold a leadership contest in which its members will actually get to decide the winner – and perhaps our next Prime Minister.