Rishi’s mad dash: can he catch up with Truss?

Just a couple of weeks ago, Rishi Sunak was the clear bookies’ favourite in the Tory leadership contest. He had the largest parliamentary support and was set to top every round of MPs’ voting. He had 20,000 volunteers, a well-organised team, a slick launch – and (he thought) all of August to convince party members that he was the real deal. His strength, his supporters argued, was a firmer grasp of policy and better verbal dexterity than his opponents. So the final format – a dozen head-to-head debates – would give him time to win.

Then, disaster. The Tories became paranoid that the unions could sabotage the process with a Royal Mail strike, so Conservative campaign headquarters announced they would send out the voting papers almost as soon as the final two had been selected. They did delay this a little after an outcry from the campaign teams, but only by a week. As one sceptical MP puts it: ‘There’s little point having a seven-week contest if the ballots drop at the beginning.’

So rather than a long summer, Sunak finds himself with barely a week to close what suddenly seems to be a big gap. A YouGov poll found Tory members backing Liz Truss by a margin of 24 points, so Sunak badly needs everything to go right. That seems a stretch. Although he narrowly won with the general public in last week’s BBC debate, Truss came out on top in polling of the Tory membership. Sunak’s attempt to catch up on Tuesday was thwarted when the moderator fainted and the debate was called off. Potentially, he now has only days to close the gap.