There were audible gasps in Committee Room 14 when the result of the fourth leadership ballot was announced.
All day long the question in Westminster was whether it would be Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch who would make it through to battle it out with James Cleverly in the race for the Tory leadership.
Robert Jenrick was seen to have damaged his prospects after assertions in a social media video that the special forces were killing terrorists rather than apprehending them, due to the European Convention on Human Rights.
Kemi Badenoch had reminded people of her unpredictable nature, when she sparked a row over maternity payments.
James Cleverly had also secured the most votes of all candidates in round three of voting.
There was consensus that he had performed strongly at the Conservative party conference with his pitch to be "more normal".
So when Bob Blackman, chair of the 1922 Committee, read out the results on Wednesday, there was obvious shock.
Accusations flew around that tactical voting had backfired spectacularly.
The theory was that an attempt to knock either Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick out of the race by Cleverly supporters lending their votes to them saw their man, the favourite, eliminated.
James Cleverly's campaign team strenuously denied that they had encouraged anyone to lend their vote, insisting that the opposite was in fact the truth.
Once again, the Conservative Party had rejected calls from party grandees like Theresa May for it to move to the centre of the political spectrum and focus on recapturing Liberal Democrat seats, rather than Reform ones.
Instead, the membership will now choose between two candidates who are seen by many to be on the "right" of the party.
In the minds of some, it has placed the Tories at greater risk of losing the next general election.
Labour's relief
Charles Walker seemed to capture the mood of many back in 2022, when he furiously denounced his Conservative Party colleagues for putting Liz Truss into Number 10.
He said that he had enough of "talentless people" getting cabinet positions.
After the defeat of the Conservative Party in the last election, he spoke to RTÉ News outside Westminster.
He spoke of the need for the party to start putting the country first rather than "party, party, party".
It was a strategy that worked well for Labour leader Keir Starmer.
Asked this week how he felt about the result of the latest leadership ballot, the former MP said that it was evidence that the Conservative Party had once again chosen "revolution over evolution", describing it as a "head in hands moment".
"I really like Kemi," he insisted.
However, given the choice, he believed James Cleverly would have put the party in a better position to defeat Labour.
"Keir Starmer is lucky in his enemies," Walker said, given that the Labour Party has had its own difficult start in government.
Leader for now
The former Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, turned podcaster, George Osbourne, told his listeners this week that he believed that whoever wins this Conservative leadership contest is unlikely to still be leader for the next general election.
It is a belief that many in Westminster hold.
He points to the last time the Conservative Party was in opposition when it had three different leaders who failed to get to Number 10: William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard.
Some also believe that the Conservative Party is going through a "Corbyn" phase, somebody who has many loyal supporters, but has faced criticism that he could never win Labour a majority.
Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick would reject such comparisons.
Supporters of either candidate might also point out that the Conservative Party moved towards a "moderate" form of politics with its current leader Rishi Sunak and ended up losing over 200 seats.
The coming weeks will see Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick seek to convince the party membership to elect them as the new leader.
Their longevity in the job, however, will depend on convincing the wider electorate that the Conservative Party deserves to be back in Number 10.
