Is Penny Mordaunt the Stop Boris candidate?

Here’s a little mystery: whatever happened to that nice, sensible foursome whom all week we were led to believe were ready to seize the reins of power from Liz Truss: Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt and Ben Wallace? If Truss resigned, we were told, the Tory party would behave in the same grown-up fashion that it did when it elected Michael Howard as leader unopposed in 2003.

Yet come Truss’s resignation the fab four was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Penny Mordaunt quickly made it plain that she didn’t want to play second fiddle to Sunak and believed that she could run in her own right. There are two possible explanations for this. Firstly, that Mordaunt’s personal ambition is stronger than her desire to establish Conservative party unity. Or that secondly, she is the secret ‘Stop Boris’ candidate.

The problem for the fab four – if they ever really existed – will have become apparent as soon as 1922 chairman Sir Graham Brady announced the rules for the leadership election.