The Tory leadership: great viewing

Okay, I admit it... I'm slightly obsessed by the Tory leadership contest. Back in August, I thought it was dull, didn't care. Now I find it fascinating, albeit in a Big Brother / X-Factor kinda way.

The annoyingly compulsive PoliticalBetting.com is currently running a prediction thread for the 1st round of voting. I've guessed as follows:

David Davis: 64
David Cameron: 53
Ken Clarke: 44
Liam Fox: 37

But I really have no idea; any combination is possible. There's not even an EARS switch analysis to help me out.

Davis is, I'm convinced, a write-off: his campaign collapse has been like watching a political version of the Wall St crash, or the pricking of the dot.com bubble.

I'm surprised Master Cameron has been unable to generate more public supporters among Tory MPs since he became the media's anointed Tory messiah. (Perhaps his campaign is waiting for the second round to generate the 'big mo'?)

But he's surely a shoo-in against any of the others in the members' ballot, except maybe Ken... And I can't help feeling the cuddly ex-chancellor is going to do better than folks think. He usually does.

As for Liam Fox, he's obviously the Lib Dems' dream Tory leader. But it ain't going to happen. Which is probably a good thing for British politics.

Perhaps the most fun has been reading the vitriol, invective and bile generated on ConservativeHome's leadership comments page by Tories fighting like a [insert collective noun here - I can't be arsed looking it up on Wikipedia] of ferrets in a sack. They put internal Lib Dem disagreements to shame. (Thankfully.)