Forget Boris, here’s a surprise choice as next PM

WHO will be the next Prime Minister? This subject increasingly dominates conversation at Westminster.

Three big names are in the frame: Boris Johnson, Theresa May and George Osborne (with the latter’s prospects widely agreed to be fading).

This week, following the settlement of the dispute with junior doctors, I would like to put another contender into the mix. Unlike May, Johnson and Osborne, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt rarely finds himself in the headlines. Yet he has a very impressive track record in business and a hinterland outside politics.

He has proved a remarkably successful — or at any rate lucky — Health Secretary. There have been no great disasters on his watch and he has also made some important reforms.

Not only has he secured a seven-day NHS, but he is going on to the very brave step of taking on the hospital consultants, who operate a virtual cartel at the heart of the health system. Though he wants the UK to stay in the EU, he’s avoided any strident role in the bitter Tory civil war over the referendum and would be well placed to unify the party whatever its result.

If Mr Hunt continues in his style of understated success and emerges victorious from the coming clash with the consultants, I can see him (especially if Osborne implodes) as the preferred choice of the Cameron wing of the Tory party when the time comes.