“I can’t even remember their names. Who are they? They’re complete nobodies… Everyone’s forgetting something here, it doesn’t matter a damn who the next Tory leader is.”

Speaking with his army of four MPs behind him, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s assessment of the relevance of the Conservative Party leadership contest is open to question.

Even at their lowest ebb in 200 years, there are still 25 times as many Tory MPs as Reformers. That’s 125 Conservative MPs whose task will be to select the final two-person shortlist once the four remaining candidates have strutted their stuff before this week’s party conference in Birmingham.

Farage is right on the nobodies, though. The four challengers are the least distinguished group ever to have vied to take over the democratic world’s most formidable election-winning machine.

In case you had forgotten, or never known, the surviving runners are Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly. None of them have already passed the Desert Island Discs’ criterion of “person of achievement”. Yes, they have all served in a real Cabinet, but without leaving a trace behind them. Anyway, with the exception of Cleverly, the other middle ranking ministers are busily disowning the governments in which they served.

The affable James Cleverly, aged 55, is the oldest candidate and by far the most experienced, with six years at the Cabinet table behind him as Tory chairman, and education, foreign and home secretaries. Tugendhat, 51, and Jenrick, 42, never made full Cabinet status, in spite of being........

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