Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O’Flynn

Boris’s successor should be Rishi Sunak, not Liz Truss

(Photos: Getty)

Is the ball about to come loose at the back of the scrum? Though an imminent defenestration of Boris Johnson is still just about odds-against, the chances of him leading the Tories into the next election are certainly receding.

Should a leadership contest be required as early as next year it is already clear who the two leading candidates would be. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak will face off against the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss for the right to define yet another new Tory era.

Truss is a total rookie in a great office of state, having been in post for just a few months. As someone yet to mark his second anniversary as Chancellor, Sunak is hardly a seasoned statesman either. But there is nobody around the Cabinet table who eclipses these two media performers.

Michael Gove, for all his brilliance, has never polled well with the wider public – even before his various recent acts of eccentricity. Priti Patel has become a by-word for failure. Dominic Raab has morphed into one of those clever men who keep saying stupid things. Sajid Javid is just a bit ‘meh’. And the rest of them might as well be on a roll-call of staff at Trumpton Fire Station – Pugh, Pugh, Barney Mcgrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub.

So it will be Rishi, the king of social media graphics, against Liz, queen of the photoshoot. As gifted and highly-motivated climbers of the greasy pole, both will have sensed several weeks ago that the ultimate prize could soon be up for grabs. And both will also have figured out that the other is the main rival.

There is no guarantee that either will ever match the appeal of Boris in his pomp

Hence Sunak’s plaintive coda late in his Budget about being an instinctive tax-cutter who does not believe in the state encroaching on personal responsibility, despite having spent most of his speech whacking up taxes and rolling forward the frontiers of the public sector.

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