OPINION - Who will be the next Tory leader? It's best to start with the F word...

“Stop messing around” was Kemi Badenoch’s forthright advice to desperate Tory backbenchers, flirting with a Hail Mary leader switch before the election. The ex-defence secretary, Ben Wallace, who speaks as if addressing a slightly dim Army platoon, put the same thought just more pessimistically, as he urged colleagues to set aside fantasies of replacing Rishi Sunak and “march towards the guns” of the election reckoning.