With a fortnight to go until Conservative MPs begin whittling down the field of six leadership candidates, the race for the next Tory leader is wide open.
So far, only a third of them have publicly declared who they are backing in the contest, with many MPs biding their time and resisting the temptation to nail their colours to the mast.
Publicly backing a winning candidate, and doing so early on, can put an MP in a favourable position under the new leader. Public endorsements in such contests often hinge as much on who an MP expects to win, as it does on who they hope will win.
But with no clear frontrunner yet, this parliamentary electorate is showing a greater degree of caution than in previous leadership polls.
This is bound to change after the first round of voting, when a candidate starts to look like they’re on course to make it through to the final two. That’s when we can expect a wave of MPs to enthusiastically endorse the frontrunner.
It’s why all candidates will be aware of how important a strong showing in the first round is. So far, none of them are there yet, but if they can try and break free of the pack, they stand a good chance of winning the support of many previously undeclared MPs.
Of course that’s still only the first phase of the contest. The two candidates who receive the most support within the parliamentary party will then face a vote of Conservative Party members, which is only adding to MPs sense of caution. How to gauge which candidate will fare best with the Tory faithful has just got harder.
Conventional wisdom holds that a pitch from the right of the party has the best chance of success, which chimes with a survey conducted by Conservative Home showing Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick have a healthy lead over other candidates. But this was turned on its head this week by the first major poll of Tory members which had James Cleverly, very much from the moderate wing of the Party, as their preferred candidate.
What is clear is that a battle-weary parliamentary party and membership, who have gone through two bruising leadership contests in as many years, as well as a crushing General Election defeat, are still far from settled on the best way forward.
