Sketch: Rishi Sunak held captive as Tory MPs jockey for his job

Rishi Sunak is being held captive by the Conservative Party.

The poor man just wanted to leave the stage quietly, having been absolutely pummelled by the electorate in July, and get on with his new life as a backbench MP. He could be licking his wounds in the heated swimming pool in his North Yorkshire mansion while thinking about his future options, like that move to California to be a tech bro.

Instead, his colleagues are making him stay on as acting leader while they have a massive row about what he did wrong and how he messed up so badly. A post-mortem on a living man.

Perhaps Sunak’s new-found confidence in a leading political role – he seems much happier now than he ever was as prime minister – is actually Stockholm Syndrome. He loves his party, honest he does. They are no threat to him. And he will not say anything bad about any of them, particularly those colleagues who quite openly manoeuvred against him during his entire premiership.

It’s a surprise, really, that anyone wants his old job. Yet even before the election was lost, his worthy successors (at least, according to themselves) were already planning their pitches.

Tugendhat loves being punished – another reason why he thinks he’ll be a good Tory leader

James Cleverly was the first out the gate. He would, he insisted, be the grand unifier. Because it was the lack of unity within the Tory party that lost them the election, he said. The “successful” policies of supporting Ukraine and the furlough scheme had been “overshadowed by a number of negatives”, he said, “and so we didn’t get the cut through for our successes and the criticisms really, really landed”.

Which in lay terms means: Partying while the country was in lockdown, Liz Truss trashing the economy, Sunak showing disrespect to veterans and high-level politicos using insider knowledge to place bets really stopped us being able to talk about the two things we’re proud of. Oops.

There was also the fact they were too busy trash-talking each other to campaign. “We spent too much time rowing amongst ourselves, which gave the impression – the wrong impression – but gave the impression that we were more focused on ourselves than serving the British people,” Cleverly suggested. Well…

Tom Tugendhat was next up, saying his party had “failed” the British public. But that would change with him at the helm – and he’s got a record of delivery to prove it, he insisted. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan before entering politics! Then as security minister he single-handedly faced off Russia, China and Iran! And even got sanctioned for it! The man loves being punished – another reason why he thinks he’ll be a good Tory leader, presumably.

One journalist asked whether the public can really trust his judgement, given he backed Liz Truss to be leader once. Tugendhat inhaled sharply at the question and put on his best brave face – which looked distinctly like a grimace – before saying Truss had “demonstrated a recklessness that surprised all of us”. But never mind that, he went on, that’s in the past and he’s all about the future now.

Badenoch claimed a Conservative recovery meant 'making the right choices rather than easy ones'. Herself being the 'right choice'

Robert Jenrick said he was running but didn’t set out his stall properly for several days. Perhaps he was hoping to build anticipation and excitement, a difficult thing for a man whose surname literally sounds like “generic”.

Mel Stride strode onto the stage as the fourth man to say he wanted the job. And he’s the “right man” because he went out campaigning to ensure “as few of my colleagues losing their seats as possible”. A winning argument – he’s the former work and pensions secretary who tried to keep his pals in work.

“I had the courage and the drive to put my head above the parapet and to go out and face the fire,” the MP said when asked why he had taken on so many media appearances during the election campaign. He then refused to set out his views on things like the ECHR. That’s policy and that’s not for him to say, said a man that could one day run for prime minister. To be fair, that approach worked for Keir Starmer.

Priti Patel was the first woman to enter the contest. The former home secretary, who once faced allegations of bullying, insisted she was the one who could unite the party – presumably by ruling with an iron first.

“Robust discussion” is good, she wrote in The Telegraph, but “fighting” is bad. And it’s because her party slipped into the latter – into “a soap opera of finger-pointing and self-indulgence” – that they lost, she said. Not because after 14 years in government her party had failed to make a positive difference to people’s lives.

Kemi Badenoch was the final contender to announce. She claimed a Conservative recovery meant “making the right choices rather than easy ones”. Herself being the “right choice”, of course.

Her appraisal of why her party suffered defeat was that it was “led by focus groups”. Which begs the question, what were the focus groups focused on? Incompetence and gaffes? She also said her party “talked right yet governed left”. Did I blink and miss a Trotskyist takeover of the Tories? Badenoch then insisted it was time to move away from the “joyless decadence” of the modern age. Her own vision is for exuberant paltriness. Now that sounds like a vote winner.