Jeremy Hunt has given us a scarier prospect than Brexit – he’s the frontrunner to succeed Theresa May

Regardless of the staggering inadequacy of his rivals, the foreign secretary should be a 1,000-1 chance

Jeremy Hunt has reportedly been schmoozing potential rivals over power breakfasts (EPA)

Several weeks before the official Grand National at Aintree, the event guaranteed to be styled as the Conservative version is under way at Westminster.

The starter, Theresa May, hasn’t yet raised the flag (the white one of surrender). But with the PM reportedly on the brink of naming her departure date to help shove her Brexit deal over the line, more and more runners are milling about the parade ring.

Already, the pre-race formalities have produced one perfectly extraordinary fact: Jeremy Hunt is the widely recognised frontrunner to succeed May.

To repeat, for anyone fearful that they hallucinated the previous sentence, the frontrunner for the leadership of the Conservative and Unionist Party and the post of prime minister, is J-E-R-E-M-Y H-U-N-T.

Before we go on, a clarification. While the Tory leadership stakes will be compared, as I said, to the planet’s premier steeplechase, it shouldn’t be.

There are surface similarities. The field for each is enormous, and the betting markets for both feature no clear favourite.

But where the Grand National is a contest between huge, magnificent beasts of limitless courage, the Tory race is closer to the Shetland pony derby. Only in a field of political miniatures, after all, could Hunt be regarded as a likely winner.

How the foreign secretary has survived at all, after the hilariously cackhanded turn as media secretary and the longer, less amusing stint at health, isn’t far short of a miracle.

Just as with the woman he is manoeuvring to replace (he’s been schmoozing potential rivals over power breakfasts; stand by for his keynote address on inclusivity and social mobility), you grudgingly admire the tenacity.

But though he shares her mulish ability to hang about in defiance of logic and decency, he has none of her stubborn when it comes to clinging to a position.

Over the 40 years I’ve obsessively watched British politics, there has never been a volte face as brazen and cynical as his over Brexit.

A determined Remainer in 2016, his initial response to the result came in an article published four days after the referendum. In it, he proposed that we stay in the single market.

He also made the compelling point that since no one voted for the terms of departure, the country must vote on the eventual deal either in a second referendum or a general election.

That was at the start of the last Tory Leadership Stakes.

After May proved the only finisher, he wandered morosely into No 10 expecting the sack, as he had every right to do after mismanaging socialised healthcare with the zeal of the CEO of BUPA. He emerged grinning with his NHS badge re-affixed to his lapel.

As the Brexit megafiasco developed, it became clear to him, as to us all, that the Tory membership – that wizened coalition of the smug, the geriatric, the xenophobic, the racist, the nostalgic and the out-and-out doolally – would never elect an advocate of a single market Brexit, much less a second plebiscite.

After enjoying the great good fortune of replacing Boris Johnson at the Foreign Office (the equivalent of taking over as England manager from Steve McClaren), Hunt had an epiphany. It would be a heinous act of treachery, he suddenly realised, to ask the people to vote on the deal.

If it came to it, in fact, as it still might, no deal would be infinitely preferable.

The transparency of the motives behind this realignment was absolute. If the chump thought he was disguised behind frosted glass as he made the madcap lurch across the Tory Brexit divide, he was bollock naked in plain sight.

So as the runners prepare to trot off to the start line with the requisite “wide-ranging speeches” that stray far beyond their portfolios, two questions are these: are the Tory members dumb enough, if it comes to it, not to see through Hunt? And even if they aren’t, will they care?

Those enquiries are predicated on Hunt making the final two play-off as selected by MPs, which in turn depends on them coalescing around him as the compromise candidate; or at least as the candidate blandly reassuring enough to win a general election.

They won’t care that Hunt is as unprincipled a scheming little chancer as even they will have encountered if they reckon him their best hope of retaining their seats.

The membership being more ideologically driven, if fretting about imaginary migrant invasions of all-white rural villages qualifies as an ideology, it is a huge ask for even so flexible an erstwhile Cameronian centrist to limp home against an authentic candidate of the right.

For all that, I have a hunch that he’s the one to back. This comes with disclaimers: A) no one ever won the Tory leadership from the front; and (to establish my tipster credentials) B) I haven’t backed the winner of the National in 45 attempts.

On that evidence, regardless of the staggering inadequacy of his rivals – in what alternate reality would Esther McVey, Sajid Javid, Boris, Andrea Leadsom or, god have mercy, Grandpa David Davis even get past the handicapper? – he should be a 1,000-1 chance.

But at this moment in our political history, awaiting May’s white flag to start the Keystone Kops donkey derby, that isn’t the issue. The tragicomical point is that if someone with an admirably short attention span asked you to distill the state of the allegedly ruling party into no more than a dozen words, you could do no better than: “Jeremy Hunt – J-E-R-E-M-Y H-U-N-T – is the frontrunner to be next Tory leader.”