Cameron’s Kitchen: here’s one I cocked up earlier

While Tory politicians struggle to find an upside to David Cameron’s presumptuous decision to rule out a third term, the Tory leader has inadvertently fired the starting gun for the race to succeed him - and Boris Johnson is in the lead.

The Tory grassroots website ConservativeHome tweeted: “Boris Johnson: the front-runner in ConHome’s future leader poll of Conservative Party members.”

This has compounded the impression that the Tories are more interested in the election of the next leader than of the next government.

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• ‘No third term’: what other commentators are saying

Overnight, the political world was divided over whether Cameron was being clever or committing a cock-up when he told the BBC’s James Landale in a TV interview conducted at his Oxfordshire home that he would not seek a third term.

But the consensus is fast shifting towards the conclusion that he has committed political suicide in his country kitchen.

If he can win the current election campaign, he’ll be a lame duck PM from day one; if he loses, then his enemies will be able to say his arrogance was his downfall.

If any Tories are in doubt that Cameron’s announcement was a blunder, the appearance this morning of Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, on Radio 4’s Today programme to bang the drum for Conservative defence policy, should give them pause for thought.

Fallon is the safest pair of safe hands. There is no one better to go onto the flagship BBC radio show to pour cold water on a political fire. But even Fallon had trouble dealing with John Humphrys.

Fallon said loftily: “I think this is a fairly straight answer and a fairly obvious answer. He is not going to go on and on...”

Humphrys protested: “This is verging on the irresponsible. We are concerned about his judgment, that he is thinking about the future of the country... These aren’t trifling issues that affect only a few people inside the Westminster beltway…”

The BBC’s assistant political editor Norman Smith believes it won't be possible to put the leadership genie back in the bottle. The candidates – George Osborne, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, all name-checked by Cameron - are already out there running whether they like it or not.

It has given Labour and its supporters a field day. The Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire tweeted: “Cameron’s first PM to quit DURING a general election.”

For Landale, standing in for Nick Robinson while the BBC’s top man undergoes cancer treatment, it’s a scoop that will do him no harm at the corporation.

‘The Curse of the Landale Kitchen Interviews’ will go down in BBC history: first Ed Miliband and his wife Justine, filmed in the miserable second kitchen of their London home, and then having explain why they had two kitchens; now Cameron, spilling the beans in the oh-so-comfortable kitchen of his Cotswolds home to a fellow Old Etonian from the Beeb.

Landale has yet to interview Ukip leader Nigel Farage and the Greens' gaffe-prone Natalie Bennett. If they can’t stand the heat, they’d better stay out of their kitchens.