‘Get set for the cost of Iron Lady wannabes’

Thatcher’s wicked step-daughters are gathering round the political death bed of Rishi Sunak.

He’s not gone yet, despite rumours that he might fall on his sword before polling day. But the harpies get bolder by the day, anticipating a succession struggle only three weeks away.

Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, darling of the Trumpite Right of the Conservative Party, fancies herself as the heir apparent.

In the sensible corner, stony-faced former Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt, who wields a good ceremonial sword, made her ambition clear with an open attack on Sunak’s desertion from the D-Day commemoration in Normandy.

And twice-sacked ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman – remember her? She is now on manoeuvres in her new Hampshire constituency, telling fellow Conservatives that they should get into bed with Nigel Farage.

There is no shortage of ladies who launch. Liz Truss, author (it is claimed) of a book on How To Save The World in 49 Days, sees herself as a latter-day queenmaker. And isn’t that Dame Priti Patel, another double-dismissed ex-Cabinet minister and friend of the ciggy manufacturers, peering from the tobacco shrubbery?

This 21st-century frocky horror show is not a pretty sight, but the one consolation is that some of them, and their Brexit-barmy acolytes like Jacob Rees-Mogg, are unlikely to survive the coming catastrophe.

It may also be that having successively chewed up and spat out Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss, Conservative men have come to the conclusion that they can’t cope with a woman at the top.

But that doesn’t stop the ambitious Iron Lady wannabes. There’s always another generation eager to don her mantle. She’d probably view the current lot as unfit to hold her handbag.

Mind you, who are we to talk? Labour has never had a woman leader, except in a short-term acting capacity. And I suspect that it won’t happen in my lifetime.