Labour’s remarkable victory at this summer’s general election and the consequential historic defeat for the Conservatives was certainly a defining moment in British politics, but the nature of that change has yet to be properly revealed. We will know a lot more after the first Reeves budget on October 30 and the result of the Tory leadership contest to be announced just two days later on November 2.

With Cabinet Secretary Simon Case departing and Downing Street Chief of Staff Sue Gray now ousted by new eminence grise, the flame-haired Morgan McSweeney, Head of Political Strategy, tabloid attention has turned to these two key events at the end of this month. In both cases, speculation is rampant and the mood febrile, and for once, I think that the zeitgeist, the sense of uncertainty, is correct. Whether there is greater clarity inside the decision making on each flank may never be known.

These are two defining events, one for the economic and social future of the country and the other for the Right’s Long March back to respectability. Fortunately for we citizens, both will shortly be resolved, pro tem, and we will all be returned to quiet monitoring of a more stable national politics – though this may not happen immediately.

It all depends on whether the markets accept the budget and whether the losing faction in the Tory Party agrees to go quietly. The latter seems a bit of a stretch, given recent form, but at least it promises to have zero effect on our lives in the Forest of Dean for a significant while.

Even for those of us who are huge fans of Rachel Reeves, there is a certain nervousness. This is a very difficult budget to get right and a very easy one to get wrong. She seems to have focussed on the Economics part of her PPE at Oxford, while previous students David Cameron (politics as Keeping up Appearances) and Boris Johnson (‘Ah, but what IS truth?’) might have skipped that bit. A worry is that, while Oxford University says loudly that it only takes the brightest and the best, there are at least two former PMs that give the lie to that claim. Well, these are the people that people that also gave us the third best vaccine.

Those who inhabit ‘the markets’ are overwhelmingly male and maverick, and that shouts Tory. They have no interest in any level of tolerance towards a government that may redistribute their wealth to those from whom they previously extracted it. And this is the audience that needs to be at least placated.

Yet Reeves also needs to get the politics right and that means some transfer of money to the least well off, not least because poor people who find themselves with additional funds are in no position to open a Saver Plus. They spend it as soon as, and that gives a kick start to growth that she will understand well.

Where she gets that money, who will be the unwilling benefactors, is still a very open question.

On the other side of the coin, derision is being poured on the four candidates, with one colourful cartoon depicting them as the Feeble version of the cartoon characters, the Fantastic Four. I did a search for ‘horsemen’ and ‘apocalypse’, so no one has gone with that as yet. I am pretty sure that no Tory Party member will follow my recommendations and that, I feel, gives me carte blanche.

Everyone but me seems to have been impressed with James Cleverley. I watched in full all of the final speeches to conference except his. It wasn’t that I find him angry and unpleasant, which I do, but that pausing after each word was sapping my will to live. I recently lampooned Mark Harper’s leadership bids, not least because PMQs might have become so slow and dull as to be unwatchable, but it is good to see Cleverley taking up the mantle.

My emotional favourite, and here my friends will be reaching for the tar and feathers, is Kemi Badenoch. She has that calm, naïve aura of certainty. What comes out of her mouth is another matter entirely. You cannot get away with that for too long once under scrutiny. Now, Badenoch versus Starmer at the Dispatch Box? That’s worth the price of admission.

I see her once proud party as addicted to the unattainable ideals of zero tax, zero public services and zero immigration. Perhaps a Badenoch leadership is the fabled lowest point that can lead to an addict’s rehabilitation.

Apparently, there were two other worthy candidates, but I seem to have forgotten them as soon as they stopped speaking.