Enid Blyton made a lot of money out of the Famous Five. Maybe she could have invented a brand called the ‘Infamous Five’ that would have made her even more. But the Unfamous Five is a name that might have struggled to bear box office fruit.
Yet the glories of the British constitution are about to deliver one of five little-known people – none of whom has a substantial political following of their own – into the office of prime minister.
One out of Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat is about to become the political leader of the nation. Constitutionally, there is no issue about any of them taking over the mandate that the Conservative party won under Boris Johnson in December 2019.
In Britain, one votes for a local MP and a party rather than for a particular leader. That’s not really how it felt two and a half years ago.
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