Chump or champ? Why Ben Wallace could be the next PM

During the Afghanistan crisis last summer, Ben Wallace decided that he had what it took to be prime minister. He had suspected it before then, according to friends, but during the evacuation of Kabul the Defence Secretary came to a definitive conclusion.

His prediction that the Taliban would take Kabul had been proved correct, when other senior ministers involved had failed to see it coming. And as the desperate situation played out following the US withdrawal, he hit his stride.

His row with the then foreign secretary Dominic Raab over the fall of Kabul was a turning point for the way he saw himself, insiders say. Raab was caught off guard, on holiday. Wallace was on top of his brief, cancelling a weekend away, deploying British troops to the airport as the Taliban advanced, declaring that he had known ‘the game was up’ months ago.

He even defied public hysteria to speak out against the apparent diversion of military resources to rescue the cats and dogs of Pen Farthing’s animal sanctuary.