12 days ago she was just a 5% chance

My own view is that Truss punters are overstating her prospects because the challenge facing her is so much greater than Starmer. For the latter could be the post-election PM even if LAB has fewer votes and MPs than the Tories.

We’ve observed several times here that the Tories will struggle to find partners to keep them in power if they come out with fewer than half the seats. The same doesn’t apply to Starmer. What needs to happen for him to get the top job is for the Tories to lose their majority. It is just possible that the Tories could do a deal with the DUP but things are less friendly in that area.

What looks like being the party of Truss is fighting on two main fronts. To hold onto as many of their GE2019 gains from LAB as possible and to beat off the LDs in those 70 or so heavily Remain seats where there are a lot of graduates. My guess is that in the latter group of seats much of the Truss approach to asylum seekers and Rwanda is going to go down like a ton of bricks.

It is going to be very difficult having messaging that works both in Blue Wall and Red Wall seats.

Mike Smithson