Continuing my recent commentary on the likely result of the Conservative party leader election , yesterday was pretty disastrous for Liz Truss, not great for Penny Mordaunt and a a day of recovery for Rishi Sunak,. Here are the latest odds.
Compare this with 24 hours earlier
I preferred the football to the debate and saw only a little of what went on in highlights, but this appeared a fair assessment of how the candidates went down with the public.
But of course that is no guide to how MPs will select the two candidates that go before the Tory membership and no guide as to how the Tory membership will select our next prime minister.
A more meaningful assessment came from social media
1. Tugendhat: Had easiest job. Did it. Doesn’t matter
2. Sunak: Only adult in the room probably works better with floating voters than Tory MPs.
3. Badenoch: Nice lines but nowhere near ready for the job.
4. Mordaunt: Is that it?
5. Truss: Robot on valium— alexmassie (@alexmassie) July 15, 2022
Penny Mordaunt, Kemi Badenoch and Liz Truss, were they to win, would have to do a lot better than they did last night. In case I appear biased to publicly schooled male presentational styles, I’d add that Angela Rayner is a cut above any of the above as a debater.
My good friend and I were also concerned whether our views were showing some sort of male bias when assessing the 5 performances even though neither of us went to public school. However we concluded that truss was a robot, mordaunt was vacuous and badenoch was odd. It’s very worrying that one of these 5 inadequates will soon be the prime minister