TORY wannabes are pouring out of the woodwork, promising the Earth in return for a short lease on Number Ten before Keir Whatshisname moves in.
Counting Liz Truss tomorrow, there are ten in the race, down from a dozen possible PMs after the withdrawal of non-starter Steve Baker and — most astonishingly — Defence supremo and runaway early favourite Ben Wallace.
Within hours, we were being promised tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Money for nothing and your votes for free. Don’t ask where the cash is coming from.
But these are piffling issues.
What people really want to know is the answer to these game-changers:
1) Setting aside bottom-clencher Matt Hancock, name at least one “Spad-shagger” (a technical term for relations between a minister and a Special Adviser).
2) Who is the spanker/ spankee who enjoys a spot of S&M?
3) Which candidate employs the services of sex workers, formerly known as “prostitutes”?
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These are just some the slurs and smears against unnamed runners and riders.
For legal reasons, the answers will not be found at the foot of the page.
Depending on taste, they could dash a candidate’s hopes or help them sweep the nation.
It comes to something even in this seedy political era that such rumours began circulating inside Tory ranks the moment that Boris announced his resignation.
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But it breaks shocking new ground when they are peddled in plain sight over a pint in a pub to gleeful Labour officials.
The Tory party in Whitehall and Westminster is rank with bitterness and revenge — the greatest threat to its survival as a force in British politics.
Conservatives — or at least a BoJo-sized chunk of them — are mad as hell about his brutal assassination and they are not going to let the culprits get away with it.
A red mist has descended, paralysing this Government as it faces the biggest economic crisis since World War Two — perhaps including the riot-torn Thatcher years of the 1980s.
It is an inexcusable failure of leadership.
Boris Johnson is already the past. He knew the risks when he made his dash for power: “Them’s the breaks.” Now Tory MPs must choose the right future leader and stick by that verdict . . . or be swept into the outer darkness.
With the right policies, carefully explained, there is still time to win back voters who want grown-up leadership at this time of family hardship.
We need to be told frankly what lies ahead in this still unfolding cost-of-living storm — and what sensible, if painful, measures are required to break through.
Inexcusable failure
This Government deserves little sympathy for its legion of unforced errors and self- inflicted wounds.
But it has one huge advantage — a drab and colourless Labour Opposition which, even without Keir Starmer’s dead-hand leadership, is in desperate straits, crippled by its past as a Corbynite rabble.
Labour is split from Left to Right, top to bottom, over the economy, immigration, policing.
It cannot even define what makes a woman.
It is staggering, after more than a decade in the wilderness — in the midst of unprecedented Tory chaos and scandal and its quest for a fourth Prime Minister in 12 years — Labour is still only a pathetic five points ahead in the polls.
Even its greatest election winner, Tony Blair, has no faith in his old party and is trying to set up a rival grouping.
Voters are not stupid.
They can see the perils of a coalition between Labour, limp Lib Dems and the snide SNP. So the game is still wide open.
Fabulous wealth
Politics is a rough old trade.
Boris Johnson’s allies should not fret unduly about the injustice of his downfall.
He is unlikely to spend much time thinking about them.
Lord Boris of Brexit will lick his wounds, briefly, and then plunge into a new and carefree era of fabulous wealth, easy access to high places and lifelong superstardom. Plus perks.
He has at least one cash-filled volume of memoirs to publish.
He can command a million dollars each time he delivers an hilarious hallmark speech.
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And, who knows, there might be a blockbuster movie charting his spectacular rise and inevitable crash, perhaps with the man himself in the starring role.
As his own great hero Winston Churchill remarked: “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”
Shockers in all parties
FURTHER to my quiz, above, seedy misconduct did not begin in this age of instant gratification.
There are shockers in all parties, not least Christine Keeler’s 1960s sex, lies and spies Tory furore.
Paedophile Cyril Smith, alleged murder plotter Jeremy Thorpe and Paddy Pantsdown did it for the Libs.
And just four years ago, Jeremy Corbyn was handed a dossier of 43 stories of harassment, abuse and sexual violence against women at all levels of the Labour Party.
There’s nothing new under the political sun.
