Why the Tory leadership race could now be cut short

Before this Tory leadership election started, the party’s grandees and custodians were telling me party members MUST at all costs be given a choice of candidates to be leader and our next prime minister.

Now they tell me Boris Johnson is so far ahead – both among MPs and seemingly among the membership – that it would politically insane to stick to the current timetable of two candidates beating each other up in public, in front of mostly retired white men, for four weeks.

“At a time when we face the greatest test for generations [delivering Brexit], the spectacle of two middle-aged men scrapping for the votes of our members, who are not exactly a perfect representation of this country, would be catastrophic – for confidence in us and in politics in general,” I was told.

So serious thought is being given both to massively shortening the campaign for members’ votes, or turning it into a confirmatory ballot of one candidate (obviously Johnson) or dispensing with the members’ vote altogether.