The Tory leadership race has already started – but I wouldn’t write off Boris Johnson just yet

Though it still feels unlikely that the prime minister will be toppled before Christmas, the sound of knives sharpening has been getting louder around Westminster, writes Marie Le Conte

‘Johnson was only picked because he could keep the Conservatives up in the polls’ (PA)

A fortnight really is a long time in politics. At the end of November, I toyed with the idea of writing a column about the Conservative leadership contest that is bound to happen at some point. “Of course, no one is suggesting anything will happen anytime soon”, I was going to write; “Johnson is, after all, still reasonably safe in No 10”. What a fortnight it has been.

Though it still feels unlikely that the prime minister will be toppled before Christmas, the sound of knives sharpening has been getting louder around Westminster. Johnson was, after all, only ever picked because he could keep the Conservatives up in the polls – with the Labour Party now having its highest lead over the government since 2014, MPs are getting jittery.

Still, his saving grace – for now – may well be that the parliamentary party simply does not know who it is, or what it wants. Take Liz Truss: there was a story in the Mail on Sunday the other week about red wall MPs having created a WhatsApp group (since deleted) called “Liz For Leader”.

It was puzzling, both because the point of discreet plotting surely is to be discreet, but also because it would make little sense for these MPs to want Truss as the next PM. A free-market libertarian at heart, the foreign secretary longs for a shrunken state, with everything that entails.

The 2019 intake of northern MPs won their seats by targeting former Labour voters disillusioned with the left and wishing to see hefty investment in their communities. Is someone who called for bonfires of red tape – and who once wrote that Britons were “among the worst idlers in the world” – really the person that will solidify the gains of the last election?

This is no longer a country in which George Osborne’s fiscally-conservative but socially-liberal politics can form a coherent majority; Brexit changed that. Truss has certainly been popular among portions of the Tory benches for a long time – I remember talking to an MP in 2018 who hoped she would replace Theresa May – but it isn’t clear she would do it for voters at large.

Then there is Rishi Sunak, the Treasury’s golden boy. His rise was seamless and Boris-sceptics believe he could bring back a conservatism more traditional than Johnson’s ideological hodgepodge. He is slick, looks friendly and competent, and could be Britain’s first ethnic minority prime minister.

At risk of putting my neck on the line, I do not believe this will happen. Sunak’s rise was so seamless that he got to No 11 without ever really bothering to find his people in the parliamentary Conservative Party. Few people know him well, or seemingly have his ear.

This wouldn’t necessarily be a gamechanger in a different context but would, I think, play against him in this contest. After all, the current prime minister is a man who rose to power alone, and is partly a headache for his fellow MPs because he does not feel especially close to them. Would these MPs be ready to take a similar gamble, and go for someone they do not really know?

Elsewhere, there are whispers that Tom Tugendhat may put himself forward, but it seems unlikely that a Conservative Party built in the shape of Brexit Boris will go for someone like him. The health secretary Sajid Javid could also go for it, following his honourable defeat in the summer of 2019 – people around him believed that Rory Stewart killed his campaign last time around, and it is fair to say he is no longer a threat.

Or maybe it will be someone else entirely; half the fun of leadership contests lies in their unpredictability. Still, the current field of candidates is not making the parliamentary Conservative Party look at ease with itself. Odd alliances are being made and names are being picked not out of enthusiasm, but because they feel like the least bad option, just about.

A fortnight is a long time in politics but really, not much has changed for Boris Johnson quite yet. I wouldn’t relax if I were him, but I wouldn’t be booking the moving vans either.