As of midday today, a couple of hours before nominations for Conservative Party leader have to be submitted, Rishi Sunak has already found at least half of the parliamentary party willing to state publicly that they support his candidature.

Angela Leadsom, among others, is quoted as saying Penny Mordaunt should not pull out of the race because it is important to have a choice. Mordaunt has only 27 declared supporters as I write this, nowhere near the minimum 100 needed to trigger a vote.

Leadsom however ignores the fact that the party members best qualified to assess the performance and abilities of Sunak and Mordaunt – the MPs serving in Parliament – are already indicating their choice in no uncertain manner.

I have no idea how Rishi Sunak will fare as Prime Minister, although I doubt he will crash and burn as Truss did. As a former chancellor he does at least have first hand knowledge of how economic policy should work, something that Liz Truss did not have.

Boris Johnson – at best, just a signal jammer – has, for the time being, left the building. He undoubtedly had the charisma it takes to figurehead a government but far too few scruples to withstand close scrutiny.

It is overall of much less importance that Rishi Sunak wasn’t the face of the last Tory landslide. He stands for the manifesto the party was elected on, and deserves the opportunity to follow that through. He has a mandate, that much is clear.