How’ll this look after the party conferences?

We are only a few weeks away from the party conference season and although the events have been truncated the big set pieces will be the speeches of Johnson and Starmer.

For the latter has never been able to make a big speech in front of the party faithful since becoming the leader in April last year. His conference creates a huge opportunity to get himself more widely known and get the focus on Labour’s plans should he get the chance of entering Number 10 after the next election.

At least Johnson had one party conference as leader before COVID began to dominate everything and his conference set-piece will get a huge amount of coverage and scrutiny.

The betting market above is largely determined by whether Johnson goes before the general election or afterwards. I cannot help but think that the big risk to Johnson is doing something that undermines Sunak that sets in motion a process that could lead to his ousting. The response to the weekend reports of Johnson’s feelings about Sunak has been very revealing.

Mike Smithson