Two things strike me about the Tory leadership contest and I don't like either.

The first is that for the first time in my life, the Prime Minister will be younger than me.

No matter who wins out of the five remaining wannabe PMs, they have been on this planet for a shorter time than I have.

Some would say they are on another planet but more of that later.

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The second thing is that as, one by one they are booted out of the race, any pleasure in seeing the power-hungry contenders’ dream die with Sir Graham Brady’s declaration is quickly replaced with the realisation that one those still standing will be the Prime Minister before long.

And there's nothing I can do about either of those facts.

That senior politicians are now younger than I simply means I am getting older.

The fact one of them will be the next Prime Minister is down to a small section of people. I don’t have a say, very few people do.

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First, 358 Conservative MPs will whittle it down to a choice of two, which looks like being between Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt.

Then the members of the party, generously estimated at around 200,000 or so, will choose who becomes Tory leader and automatically Prime Minister, until the next election at least.

This is the bit that rankles. We are told that the people elect MPs and the Parliament decides who is Prime Minister.

But here we have a tiny percentage of the population choosing who governs the country.

This will be the third time in the last six years this has happened.

Either parliament chooses the Prime Minister, or it doesn't. If the elected Tory MPs in Westminster, who are in the majority, vote to approve Boris Johnson’s successor fair enough.

But to give 0.3% of the country, just because they are party members, the decision, is not fair on the rest of us. No-one elected them to make decisions on our behalf.

It is an anomaly but everyone knows at a General Election people, when they elect their MP, are voting for a party and who they want as Prime Minister.

This is the Prime Minister’s mandate.

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There must be an argument for a new Prime Minister having to call a General Election in these circumstances.

Otherwise, the rest of us just have to shut up and put up with it.

So, who will be the next Prime Minister? What are they all about and what do we know about them?

First, Rishi Sunak. He wants to talk up his ‘family journey’.

Matt Hancock, one of his supporters, said Sunak came from modest beginnings and then made a success of his life.

Little Rishi was the son of a GP dad and a pharmacist shop owner mum. However did they manage? Young master Sunak was educated at Winchester College (current fees £46,000).

It must have been tough for him at one the most elite schools in England. I wonder how he managed to “make a success” of his life.

He said tax cuts need to wait until the economy is more stable after the pandemic.

Then we have Penny Mordaunt.

She was raised by her father, an ex-paratrooper who became a teacher, and her mother, a special needs teacher, and attended a Catholic comprehensive school.

She said she wants to get back to the “old stuff” of low taxes, small government and personal responsibility.

Liz Truss is seen as the Boris Johnson continuity candidate.

She didn’t resign when others did out of “loyalty" to the Prime Minister and has the backing of Johnson allies, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries.

Truss was raised by Labour-supporting parents - her mother a nurse and her father a maths professor.

She attended primary school in Paisley for a while and then the family moved to Leeds.

Seen as the right-wing candidate, she backs deregulation and lower taxes.

Truss was a LibDem at university, then joined the Tories.

She backed remain out of loyalty to David Cameron, then backed Johnson as leader and now supports Brexit, leading to her being described as an “opportunist".

Kemi Badenoch, ‘anti-woke’ ex-equalities minister, and Tom Tugendhat, former soldier, are the outsiders of the final five and unlikely to get to the last two.

Badenoch has surprised many so far, so who knows.

Badenoch, another from the right, would need to take lot of support from Truss to have a chance.

Tugendhat only scraped into the latest round and lost votes from the first round, so is likely to be out in the next round.

For all the differences they are trying to present, they are minor details. All remaining have been part of the Boris Johnson Government in some way

When we finally get the result - when a fraction of the country chooses the new Prime Minister - it is likely to be; meet the new boss, same as the old boss.