Badenoch is favourite, but will she clinch Tory leadership crown?

Famously, it is the hardest job in politics: leader of the opposition.

And it is particularly hard if your party has just gone down to a historically bad thrashing at the hands of the electorate.

Any glance at the history books might not lift the spirits of the winner either.

When the Conservatives last took an almighty pasting at a general election, in 1997, it took them 13 years and four leaders to make it back to power.

When Labour were turfed out in 2010, it took them 14 years and three leaders before they won again in July.

Nonetheless, the contest to replace Rishi Sunak as Conservative leader has been a competitive one.

And precedents are there to be broken – as recent British political history attests to.

At just after 11:00 GMT on Saturday, at a swish spot up the road from Westminster, we will find out whether it will be Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick who will replace Rishi Sunak as the Conservative Party leader.

Ask most folk in and around politics who is most likely to win, and most say Badenoch.

But polling the Tory party membership is not straightforward and it is a party whose internal races often throw up surprises.

Both camps accept that turnout will be down from last time around two years ago, when Liz Truss beat Sunak and 82.5% of party members decided to have a say.

“I doubt it’ll hit 70%,” said one campaign source.

When you are no longer picking a prime minister, the stakes are not quite so high.

Here is how the morning will play out.

Both candidates will arrive under their own steam.

Each has their own green room back stage and there is a third room into which they will both be summoned to be privately told, together, what the result is, just before 11:00.

They will then attempt to put on a poker face and head out into the results room to take their seats on the front row, the rest of us still clueless about the result.

There will be a few words from the party chairman Richard Fuller, and then the result will be read out by the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Bob Blackman.

It is then speech time for the winner.

The loser will stay in their seat.

Don’t go on too long and talk to the country, and not just the party, is the mission statement for the winner in front of the lectern.

Friday was set aside by both of them to trying to find the words that will do the job.

After the speech, I’ll be throwing myself into the scrummage of senior party figures trying to grab as many interviews as I can.

Then an official car will scoop up the winner and whizz them to Conservative campaign headquarters in Westminster.

Bits of paper to sign, security briefings to be had and a shadow cabinet to assemble.

And for the loser? Find a cab to take you home.

It is a brutal old game is politics.

Existing frontbenchers, who have served under Sunak, have been asked, I’m told, to remain available in their current posts until Wednesday.

While the winner is likely to put in place their most senior team members over the weekend and into the beginning of next week, filling all the junior ranks will take some time, and there will be parliamentary appointments to keep from first thing Monday morning.

So who is going to win?

The long standing expectation of most since Badenoch and Jenrick became the final two was that Badenoch was the favourite.

Since the polls closed on Thursday that has remained the view of most, but not all.

“I still don’t expect to sleep well,” said one Badenoch supporter told me last night, adding waspishly: “he had a year’s head start” – a reference to Jenrick’s resignation from government in December last year, widely seen by his colleagues as his first move in a leadership pitch.

Badenoch remained a cabinet minister until the Conservatives’ defeat in July.

Jenrick has approached the contest as the underdog – and approached it with colossal energy too, doing 250 events and meeting around 20,000 party members.

He also appears to have said yes to almost every media invite to appear on telly, radio, newspapers, podcasts or online on any given day of the week.

Badenoch waited until the last few days for a media blitz, but was also hurtling around the country meeting as many party members as possible.

“She has that sparkle, we’d be in for one heck of a fight with Starmer with her,” one of her supporters tells me.

But both Badenoch and Jenrick know it would be one heck of a job they would be taking on.

Not long to wait now to find out whose job it will be.