Existing frontbenchers, who have served under Sunak, have been asked, I’m told, to remain available in their current posts until Wednesday.
While the winner is likely to put in place their most senior team members over the weekend and into the beginning of next week, filling all the junior ranks will take some time, and there will be parliamentary appointments to keep from first thing Monday morning.
So who is going to win?
The long standing expectation of most since Badenoch and Jenrick became the final two was that Badenoch was the favourite.
Since the polls closed on Thursday that has remained the view of most, but not all.
“I still don’t expect to sleep well,” said one Badenoch supporter told me last night, adding waspishly: “he had a year’s head start” – a reference to Jenrick’s resignation from government in December last year, widely seen by his colleagues as his first move in a leadership pitch.
Badenoch remained a cabinet minister until the Conservatives’ defeat in July.
Jenrick has approached the contest as the underdog – and approached it with colossal energy too, doing 250 events and meeting around 20,000 party members.
He also appears to have said yes to almost every media invite to appear on telly, radio, newspapers, podcasts or online on any given day of the week.
Badenoch waited until the last few days for a media blitz, but was also hurtling around the country meeting as many party members as possible.
“She has that sparkle, we’d be in for one heck of a fight with Starmer with her,” one of her supporters tells me.
But both Badenoch and Jenrick know it would be one heck of a job they would be taking on.
Not long to wait now to find out whose job it will be.
Source:
www.bbc.com
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