Today’s news on the timing of the Gray report has led to Sunak dropping below a 30% chance in the next PM betting. Clearly, his position had been underpinned by the likelihood of an early vacancy and the latest machinations reduce that possibility.

One of my current betting positions (at 10 on Betfair) is that Starmer will be the next PM – a core element of that is Johnson still being at Number 10 at the next election. I’ve long taken the view that he’s going to be a lot harder to shift him than the markets suggest. We’ve seen in the past few hours how good he is at political survival and the chances of him going into the next election still as PM are understated.

This is all clearly very fluid and, who knows, there might be a leaked copy of the Gray report that seeps out.

This was another thought I had

Mike Smithson