Who will Liz Truss send to political Siberia?

‘Whatever else you do, don’t step backwards,’ a man in the crowd shouts to Rishi Sunak as he stands on the edge of a swimming pool in the garden of a Tory councillor’s home in Bushey, Hertfordshire. About 100 party members have gathered to hear Sunak’s pitch. It’s the first of three stops he’s making before a hustings in Cheltenham. The leadership race will be decided by around 160,000 Tory members – and Sunak seems to be trying to meet as many of them as he can. On each visit he offers a version of his stump speech, including jokes about his height and how, unlike Boris Johnson, he looks as though his mother brushed his hair.

Every address he gives has a common theme: the economy. ‘We know inflation is the enemy, it makes everyone poorer,’ Sunak says. He positions himself as the candidate who tells people things they ‘don’t want to hear’.