Truss closes on Mordaunt, Sunak staying on in third.

7 am 15/07/22

With the Tory leadership campaign continuing to look a three horse race, the gap between the fillies is narrowing while the colt continues to stay on at one pace and is now a clear third in the betting.

On the track Sunak is out in front but the punters see his chances of winning when the vote goes to the Shires as less than his two more right wing opponents.

Just why sentiment is turning towards Truss and weakening for Mordaunt over the last 24 hours isn’t clear. Mordaunt has been getting some bad press from her former boss – Lord Frost- though that never stopped Johnson.

Truss will benefit from at least one parliamentary vote as a result of Braverman’s departure.

Truss seems to be capturing the votes of the hardcore Boris fans like Jacob Rees-Mogg and perhaps the markets sense she gets the Boris bounce.

Liz Truss

I think it unlikely that both Truss and Mordaunt will be selected to face off with the Tory membership, Sunak has the support of the left-wing of the Tory parliamentary party which looks pretty solid.

So the thinking seems to be that whoever comes second in the parliamentary vote, will be the next Prime Minister. Which will annoy supporters of Sunak a lot. It would also mean a very divided conservative party post September.

Personally, I hope that good sense will prevail and that we have a future Government based on meritocracy rather than ideology with the interests of the right and left wing of the conservative party represented in the cabinet. But there may have been too much blood let by September 5th, for that to happen.

Today we have a televised face off between the remaining candidates before next week’s race-offs to find out the last two

For completeness, here are the odd checkers Thursday and Friday comparisons , that show- despite their being a lot of liquidity at Betfair, that it is pretty much consensus in the gambling market’s positions.