It won’t be pretty (or Priti): The race to become the next prime minister

Sean O’Grady assesses the candidates breathing down the neck of an embattled Boris Johnson

Next in line?: (from left) Jeremy Hunt, Liz Truss, Michael Gove and Rishi Sunak (Getty/PA)

Who will be the next Tory leader? And when? One good place to start, with some caution, is what the betting markets are telling us. One thing they are indicating is that things might develop quite quickly. The odds on the winner of Thursday’s by-election in North Shropshire – a crucial real-world electoral test – have switched around radically over the past couple of weeks. The Liberal Democrats are now odds-on favourite to take this rock-solid seat, shortening from 2-1 to 4-6, while the Conservatives have drifted out badly, from 2 to 1 odds-on leaders to mere evens now.

It’s still tight, but if the Lib Dems were to snatch Owen Paterson’s old constituency it would be a shocking moment, suggesting a swing of 26 per cent plus, one of the biggest since the Second World War, on a par with such political earthquakes as Orpington (1962), and, ominously, of the same order as the switch in Chesham and Amersham earlier this year. Such a result could easily be the final straw for many worried Tory MPs and activists. The Oddschecker website points overwhelmingly to a Johnson exit date in 2022, with a 50-50 chance.