The Tory candidate announcements today have provided a spectacle in themselves. Gleefully Machiavellian, the boys (and girls) in blue have stepped up to show Labour what real back-stabbing looks like. The disintegration taking place around Corbyn is akin to a siege, determined but ultimately possessed of some restraint. The Tories, on the other hand, are engaging in wholesale carnage, a kind of madcap carnival of exuberant slaughter. It’s mutually assured destruction, go hard or go home, win-at-any-cost free-for-all bedlam.

It all started with the fairly uninteresting but vaguely amusing bids by three party non-entities. The biggest name here was Liam Fox, woken like a fascist Yogi Bear by the scent of fresh blood. He won’t win because everybody hates him, presumably not least of all the two MPs who put his name forward. People have heard of him, but that’s by no means an asset to his candidacy.

After that, the next biggest name was Andrea Leadsom. Or “Who’s that?” as she’s known to her colleagues. She also won’t win, which is probably for the best because I’m not entirely convinced she isn’t just Michael Howard in drag. Of even lesser significance is Stephen Crabb, who is only noteworthy for three things: being homophobic even by Tory party standards, having rotating eyes, and a beard he borrowed from the local rugby team. It goes without saying that he won’t win either. He’s such a fringe candidate that people don’t even know him as “Who’s that?” because they don’t notice he’s in the room in the first place.

That’s 3 of the 5, leaving only the big names: Theresa May and Boris Joh… – wait what the… Michael Gove? For real? Everything just got brilliant. Splattering Boris Johnson’s blood over their supposedly shared golden ticket to power, Gove announced he was running. Completely out of the blue. It was sensational.

There are two sides to Michael Gove. One is an almost endearingly weird geek, fiercely intelligent but lacking the polish and likeability usually desirable in a candidate. The other is a Midas-esque grim reaper, whose very touch turns things to buggered. He did it to the education sector, he did it to David Cameron and now it looks like he’s done it to Boris.

His involvement in things is so virulent that it doesn’t discriminate between good and bad. This has led at times to oddly positive destruction, such as his unweaving of Chris Grayling’s 15^th century legal ‘reforms’. Even when he tries to do good, the result is a heap of steaming detritus. As an example, he attempted to reinvigorate the English curriculum by dragging it back to the eighteen hundreds with British ‘classics’. This was at the expense of more modern classics that happened to be by non-British authors, such as Steinbeck. If you squint, you can see what he was trying to do. But no matter how hard you squint at a pile of turds, it is still a pile of turds.

By taking BoJo’s legs out in such a way, Gove was casting himself as the ‘true believer’ of Brexit. His position was one which was defined by his opponents. On the one hand, Theresa May was a (quietly cautious) Remain supporter. On the other, Boris Johnson was the flaky, erratic empty balloon, the eternal opportunist with no conviction beyond that which is currently expedient to his own goals. Casting himself in this light, Gove was simultaneously the voice of the people (at least, those who’d voted to leave) and the intellectually superior man of conviction. God save us all from conviction politicians.

It was already riveting stuff and had I not been so busy at work, I’d have been obsessively refreshing news feeds. Then I popped out to get some lunch and found myself standing still in the middle of the pavement, staring at my phone with an idiot grin. Boris showed that mercenary bandwagon-hopping was as much a boon as a burden, in his typically theatrical style. Is he a man of conviction? No. Is he a slippery bastard who knows who to live to fight another day? Oh lord, is he. I don’t like him, but I can’t help but admire his ruthless adaptability.

By announcing that he wouldn’t run after all, he put himself outside of the unchecked butchery that is the Tory leadership contest. He can fade into the background while everyone else is busy committing brutal character assassinations on each other. He may well be hedging his bets that Brexit will ultimately flounder. Instead, he can wait for a time to reemerge as the man who stared into the abyss, jumped into it and then walked out the other side. Reformed by some arcane wisdom, he’ll present himself as the man best placed to fix the mess he helped create.

He also kept his leadership ambitions alive, with a possible shot at a cabinet position under May. Leading, for instance, the Brexit negotiation team. He has the leave credentials, after all. He also has the kind of persona that might just about let him get away with completely back-tracking and making it look like he’s kept us in Europe and won some concessions along the way. Just like he always intended. Honest.

So now Gove’s position is jeopardised. No longer the thinking-man’s leave candidate, but an intellectual equal facing a long-touted party leader who commands a lot of respect and who lacks all of Boris Johnson’s weaknesses. He has also lost his claim to integrity, becoming the untrustworthy traitor to a publically popular former friend. A man who was strangely likeable, whilst also being a colossal twat.

Which leaves Theresa May in a very strong position. She’s a long-serving Home Secretary with several populist successes under her belt – Hillsborough and Stop & Search being the main examples. She has always been critical of Europe, but without crossing the line into campaigning to leave it. She might look like Emperor Palpatine’s mum, but in terms of political big-hitters she’s the best the Tories have got. I might not like her, but as with Boris, I can’t help but respect her ability.

So now the gloves are off and it’s every (wo)man for themselves. I think May is the obvious winner here, which is backed by the huge lead she has in terms of in-party supporters. What she’ll do once the bullshit and pandering of the leadership elections are over, only time will tell.