The consensus is that Rishi Sunak stood up well to a grilling by Andrew Neil in a television interview on Friday night. Neil, a former editor of The Sunday Times, is famed for destroying politicians, which is why the foreign secretary Liz Truss has refused to be interviewed by him.

After a half-hour interrogation by Neil on Channel 4, one journalist summed up: “No major wins or losses from that interview with Andrew Neil in my view. But I think Rishi Sunak deserves credit for showing up to it, which can’t be said for all the contenders…” Any impartial observer would find that in the country at large, Rishi is considered by far the better candidate. But the two leading candidates are making their pitch to between 160,000 and 200,000 Tory party members, who are to the right of the Conservative MPs who chose Rishi by 137 votes to Truss’s 113 (while Penny Mordaunt was knocked out with 105).

One Tory MP suggested that some 50,000 former members of Nigel Farage’s extremist Brexit party have become members of the Conservative party.

Another interview that Rishi did was with Charles Moore for The Spectator magazine. Again, it was obvious those who saw the interview were persuaded by Rishi.

“Brilliant interview and full marks to Charles Moore to allow such a high level of conversation,” one said. “Sunak is the right choice for PM and it will be sad if sensationalism combined with the need to follow the herd makes the grassroots Conservative party do otherwise.”

Another wondered: “Is the Conservative party really going to choose Liz Truss over this guy?” Writing in The Daily Telegraph, which he used to edit and where he is now a columnist, Moore (give a peerage by Boris Johnson by the way) made it clear he had struggled to back Truss: “Personally, I have found it exceptionally hard to make up my mind.

In the early part of the contest… of the two main candidates, Mr Sunak made a better impression. Ms Truss, particularly in the first television debate, seemed like a tired robot.

I was attracted by the Rishi charm, which combines modesty of demeanour with mastery of the subject as if he were a sympathetic surgeon ready to operate most delicately upon the nation’s troubled brain. “I still feel that pull.

Interviewing Mr Sunak for The Spectator this week, I reflected on how nice it was to talk to a politician who never bluffs about details, expresses himself so intelligently and genuinely enjoys policy argument… I must also admit to a racial preference: I would love the Conservative Party, which scooped the first Jew and the first woman, now to be led by its first British Indian. “If he did win, Mr Sunak would probably recover the goodwill of the Civil Service and some respect from alienated elites and suspicious post-Brexit world leaders.

There would be a collective sigh of relief in the corridors of power. He is a civilised man. He would never disgrace the highest office.” Like the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, the chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, Tom Tugendhat, has also endorsed Truss.

But perhaps the oddest story doing the rounds is that Boris Johnson feels sorry for Rishi. From all accounts, Boris holds Rishi responsible for triggering his fall by resigning as chancellor when he had appointed him to the post. But “on Thursday night, as he watched the first official hustings between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, he experienced a new emotion — pity,” according to The Times.