THEY’RE coming round the bend. The ground is heavy.
The last fence is in sight, but it’s all uphill to the finish.
A horse once hyped for its slickness looks like it might collapse before the final post.
The whip isn’t working, there’s nothing left in the tank. It’s painful to watch as the mud flies.
Once talked up by bookies, the flash little show pony with the blue colours was meant to be the one. Now the older horse in the red colours — written off after years of rot in the stable — looks set to sneak home by default.
Nothing particularly exciting, just in the right place at the right time as the rivals imploded.
Far from roaring, the crowd just look fed up.
Meanwhile, back in Westminster, this was the week the Tories went to the races on Rishi Sunak’s leadership.
Something in the party has snapped.
What seemed increasingly obvious to punters has finally dawned on Conservatives of all ranks and colours.
In January, when ex-Cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke screamed “iceberg” and warned the party was sailing into obliteration unless the PM changed course, he was left high and dry.
Fast forward a couple of months — a flopped Budget, more by-election defeats, a defection and a donor scandal later — and I can’t find many Tories who will not privately admit Clarke is right.
Ashen-faced ministers cry into their pints, fearing their five-figure majorities are about to go up in smoke. One veteran told me that last weekend was the worst he had ever experienced on voters’ doorsteps in more than 20 years as an MP.
Shades of Boris Johnson’s downfall ricocheted as machine gun-fodder junior ministers were sent out on the airwaves to defend the indefensible — only for No10 to panic and throw them under a bus with a screeching U-turn hours later.
Tory HQ might have cash flowing in, but the shrinking donor pool means bigger sums required from fewer — and more controversial — backers.
And when one of them allegedly says something stupid, abortive attempts to defend it are nakedly transparent.
There were hastily arranged dinners last week for MPs in quieter spots away from Parliament that had only one thing on the menu: Sunak. There is fury and bafflement that Lee Anderson was allowed to waltz off to Reform, with seemingly zero effort from party bosses to redeem him.
Cabinet ministers simply grimace when asked about the mood.
Privately they know their meal ticket is done for, admitting PM Rishi should have been pulled up months ago but now has little choice but to limp toward the finish line broken and knackered.
At the top there has been a total collapse of discipline.
An energy minister publicly slagged off the Budget, while the security minister went freelancing on defence spending.
Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch threw another one of her signature grenades — dragging Sunak kicking and screaming into admitting their biggest donor’s comment was racist. For good measure, business minister Nus Ghani piled in to criticise No10’s handling of the sorry saga.
And the centre is so weak that somehow science minister Michelle Donelan has not been fired for dumping her libel bill on the public purse.
In the Commons on Monday, an urgent question from Labour on defence saw one of the most brutal assaults on the Government from its own benches in years.
Ex-minister after ex-minister queued up to put the boot in “more in anger than sorrow” at a lack of spending on the MoD, with six out of seven Tory questions hostile.
Things are so bad that people have even started to whisper the P-bomb: Penny Mordaunt.
The Leader of the Commons — propelled to fame with a star turn at the King’s Coronation — was once written off as too woke, vacuous and a lazy minister.
Now even some of her harshest critics are talking her up, albeit in hushed tones.
“We stopped choosing leaders based on the ability to hold swords a thousand years ago,” sniffs one Tory still loyal to Sunak.
But the fact that desperate MPs are even contemplating a woman they spent years deriding as “Pretty Dormant” shows just how bad things are for No10.
No one thinks she would win an election, but the question on MPs’ lips is: “Could anyone else do any worse?”
Dreams of the Gold Cup are all but dead for the Tories but, at this rate, Sunak needs to be very careful to avoid an early visit to the glue factory.
WHILE some fed-up Tories had yearned for the sweet release of defeat with a May election, PM Rishi Sunak yesterday ruled that out as No10 strategists insisted it’s still earmarked for October.
But when in October?
The last Thursday of the month is the 31st . . . To avoid the obvious house of horror headlines, I suspect Halloween is likely out.
Early in the month would leave very little time after the summer hols for the mandatory 25 working days required for the campaign.
But I hear that Thursday 24th is out too.
If King Charles is feeling better, he will need to be around to have his hand kissed by the winner. However, he is due in Samoa for the annual Commonwealth summit that day. Which leaves Thursday 17th for polling day. And that all points to early in September to call the election.
That would mean back to school with a bang for MPs . . . and a quickie Budget?
CONGRATULATIONS to the Parliamentary Rugby XV, and not just for beating their Irish counterparts 19-17 last weekend.
The night before the match, the Irish Embassy in London hosted both teams, along with a bunch of Garda officers travelling with the politicians.
Between them they drank the outpost dry of Guinness in under two and half hours.
I’m told the changing rooms the next morning were not a pleasant experience.
PLENTY of rewriting of history after ex-PM Theresa May announced she would be standing down from her beloved Maidenhead constituency.
While the rose-tinted tributes poured in, some of her local members were cooking up a fitting tribute.
Suggestions flew around WhatsApp of parachuting Boris Johnson into the seat to get him back in Parliament, replacing May again.
They insist it was a joke.
