Rishi Sunak’s rivals must pitch themselves now – or be overlooked

What is striking about the campaign so far is how little we have seen of Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss, one of whom is likely to go through to the final two, writes John Rentoul

So far, Sunak has benefited from being better known than many of the other candidates (AFP via Getty)

It is foolish to predict, but the fundamentals are the best guide. In the end, although ideology is important, what matters is which candidate can win a general election. That is why Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, had the clever idea of promising MPs a “strike force” to help them to retain their seats – a crude appeal to self-interest.

Too crude, as it turned out: it immediately raised concerns about spending limits in constituencies. MPs’ self-interest generally operates on a higher plane – namely, which of the candidates is most likely to be a successful prime minister who offers the best chance of beating Labour in 2024 (or, in extremis, in January 2025, the latest possible statutory date).

It was the factor that decided the choice last time. Most MPs didn’t trust Boris Johnson, and didn’t like him, but they were desperate, and they calculated – correctly as it turned out – that he was the only one who could get them out of the hole they were in.

It was why Theresa May was elected – Andrea Leadsom crashed and burned because she wasn’t able to get through a personal interview without saying something disastrous about May’s childlessness.

It was how David Cameron overtook the favourite David Davis in 2005. Davis seemed to have a great backstory: council house, lone parent, state school, SAS. But when it came to it, he couldn’t deliver a big speech, and he lacked breadth of appeal across the centre ground.

It was even true of Michael Howard’s unopposed election as leader in 2003: he was the party’s best hope of making ground in the ensuing general election.

That, I think, is the best way of reading the turbulence of the next few days. What is striking about the campaign so far is how little we have seen of Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss, one of whom is likely to go through to the final two with Rishi Sunak.

So far, Sunak has benefited from being better known. Only one opinion poll so far has posed a straight choice between various Conservative leadership contenders and Keir Starmer, and Sunak was the only one who was preferred to the Labour leader. It is an urgent priority, therefore, for Mordaunt and Truss to push themselves forward at one of those times when the country is paying attention.

They might think that they have to concentrate on Tory MPs to get them through the first rounds, but many of those Tory MPs are looking to the candidates to demonstrate their national appeal, which they can’t do with just a short social-media video and private conversations in the Palace of Westminster.

Mordaunt and Truss are leaving it late to put themselves on TV and make their pitch to the country. Mordaunt’s video made a point of not showing the candidate – “less about the leader and more about the ship”. She featured only in a voiceover at the end and a still photograph. This is admirable restraint, but we are not in the 19th-century United States any more, when it wasn’t done for candidates to do anything so vulgar as to campaign for themselves.

Most of the public say they haven’t heard of her, and if she is to make her case as someone who can stop a Labour government, that has to change. Even Truss, who is better known – although mostly for a video clip about cheese – urgently needs a higher profile.

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Opinion polls of Conservative Party members are trying to capture a snapshot of a volatile electorate, and one that is insistent on seeing the candidates put through their paces in hustings. But party members and MPs are essentially looking for the same thing: election winnability.

So far, Sunak is ahead on that measure, despite this morning’s defensive campaign launch, at which he took questions from only four journalists. He remains the only candidate who is actually saying anything. First, he set the terms for the debate about tax cuts by warning against “fairy tales”, and today he praised Boris Johnson, saying he wanted to fight a clean campaign. Thus he has astutely defined the other candidates as offering pie in the sky and personal attacks.

But what will decide this contest in the end will be two things: first, which of Mordaunt and Truss faces Sunak in the final ballot among party members, and, second, which of the final two is best placed to defeat Labour in the next general election. Both Mordaunt and Truss have a lot to do to prove that they, rather than Sunak, can take the fight to Starmer.