Put 10th June in your diary. Because that is when the contest to elect a new Tory leader, and therefore a new prime minister, will begin, I am told. Why am I confident of that? Well it is the last possible date for the contest that the shop stewards for Tory MPs, the executive for the 1922 committee, deem acceptable.
And – perhaps more importantly – it is the date that the PM has signalled to her closest allies that she can tolerate. How so?
Well she does not want the state visit of Donald Trump and the D-Day celebrations of the preceding week to be undermined by the unseemly spectacle of Tory MPs and ministers scrabbling and scrambling to replace her. I expect all of this to be settled tomorrow morning between Theresa May and the chairman of the 1922 committee, Sir Graham Brady. And my assumption is the PM will announce this timetable for her departure tomorrow.
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