Who do the markets want as the next prime minister?

Message to Tory MPs: vote for Johnson and expect to pay more for your mortgage – and for your constituents to pay more too, writes Hamish McRae

Tory politicians have managed to dollop out industrial quantities of uncertainty in the past few weeks (AFP/Getty)

Well, we know who the markets would not like as the next prime minister. That is Boris Johnson. On Friday, the pound weakened when the news came through that Johnson was flying back from the Caribbean to make his pitch for the leadership. More importantly, the yield on 10-year gilts, which had been trading in the morning below 4 per cent, shot up to close above that level.

Message to Tory MPs: vote for Johnson and expect to pay more for your mortgage – and for your constituents to pay more too.

So who would they like? That is harder to gauge, as there is no simple way of measuring, but my guess is that it is a toss-up between Rishi Sunak, because he is a known quantity who shepherded the economy through the pandemic, and Keir Starmer, because he is assembling a competent team around him.