‘Whatever else you do, don’t step backwards,’ a man in the crowd shouts to Rishi Sunak as he stands on the edge of a swimming pool in the garden of a Tory councillor’s home in Bushey, Hertfordshire. About 100 party members have gathered to hear Sunak’s pitch. It’s the first of three stops he’s making before a hustings in Cheltenham. The leadership race will be decided by around 160,000 Tory members – and Sunak seems to be trying to meet as many of them as he can. On each visit he offers a version of his stump speech, including jokes about his height and how, unlike Boris Johnson, he looks as though his mother brushed his hair.

Every address he gives has a common theme: the economy. ‘We know inflation is the enemy, it makes everyone poorer,’ Sunak says. He positions himself as the candidate who tells people things they ‘don’t want to hear’. The implication is clear: he will speak the truth while Liz Truss will make promises she can’t keep. Her allies say his agenda lacks ambition and that she’s a woman of action – hence her pledge of tax cuts now.

Polls attest that Truss’s vision is more popular with members, but Sunak’s message is gaining traction in the southern ‘blue wall’. It seems to go down well in this prosperous small town on the outskirts of north London. ‘I think Liz will win but it’s a great shame,’ says Thomas, a pensioner. ‘I’ve got a credit card, you can’t put it all on the credit card.’ Another man tells me: ‘If she prioritises tax cuts for the well off, people won’t forget that.’

This is Truss’s challenge. The favourite to enter No. 10 next month, she faces a daunting first 100 days – to deliver tax cuts while guiding the country through crises in the cost of living and the NHS. Even her own backers privately have doubts about the high-stakes juggling act. ‘We are stepping into the great unknown,’ muses one Tory MP who would rather Truss than Sunak.

Both teams are in discussion with the civil service about their ideas for government. The Sunak camp questions the polls and believes that everything is still to play for. Despite predictions that 50 per cent of members have now voted, most attending campaign events are yet to cast their ballots. They’re more likely to see Sunak than Truss who, as of this week, will be spending half her time planning for her premiership.

Truss promises a September emergency budget that will either make or break her as prime minister: tax cuts which she says can be financed by extra borrowing and would promote growth. She is reluctant to give any more details until the contest is over, but she’ll have to take the edge off the energy price cap rise. A figure close to the centre of the party says there is recognition that this could require something ‘radical’.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, is expected to be her chancellor. The pair are old friends, having worked together on the Britannia Unchained book in their early political years. Both are members of the free market caucus of Tory MPs, and both strongly opposed Sunak’s windfall tax. They live near one another in southeast London, alongside fellow Truss backer Lord Frost. ‘It’s the Greenwich mafia,’ says one supporter.

While no appointment has been confirmed, those close to the pair believe it could be the most amicable PM-chancellor partnership since David Cameron and George Osborne. A colleague predicts Kwarteng would ‘facilitate, not emasculate’. ‘It helps that he doesn’t actually want to be prime minister,’ says a party figure – who adds that Kwarteng, an Old Etonian, isn’t so fussed about popularity. Which may be just as well given the spending cuts he could end up making.

One Truss supporter says the first test of her premiership will come when she names her cabinet. Will she go for vengeance, or seek to unify the party by offering posts to her critics? ‘If it’s a jobs-for-the-girls chumocracy, we’ll know that her project is doomed,’ an ex-minister argues. ‘So we should know pretty soon.’

It certainly seems probable that under Truss, the number of women in senior roles would rise. Thérèse Coffey, her closest political ally, is expected to retain an important cabinet job. Suella Braverman is tipped for Home Secretary after a tough negotiation saw her row in behind Truss, instructing her Brexiteer backers to do the same, when she was knocked out early in the leadership contest. The hope is that Braverman will be able to use her legal expertise to tackle the small-boat crossings. Other posts will likely feature Penny Mordaunt, who has endorsed Truss, and Kemi Badenoch, who has kept her powder dry after being knocked out of the race.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary could go to early Truss backer James Cleverly, a former foreign office minister – but Tom Tugendhat, who shares Truss’s hawkish ideology, can’t be completely ruled out. As for mending blue-on-blue wounds, Sunak will be offered something – although few think he will accept. Cabinet-office minister Michael Ellis is one of the Sunak supporters tipped for a role, but not many more are expected to join him. Dominic Raab, who has described the Truss economic agenda as a ‘suicide note’, is unlikely to be forgiven. Nor will he be the only one sent to political Siberia. Michael Gove – who backed Badenoch – is expected to be left on the backbenches. ‘Gove is done,’ says a Truss supporter, and there is little love lost between the two after several disputes during their time in cabinet.

Rewards for loyalty will likely extend to her staff team. While there is speculation that Lord Frost or No. 10 aide David Canzini could serve in Truss’s Downing Street, her former adviser Ruth Porter, who has played a key role on the campaign and knows Truss well, is a probable pick for chief of staff.

Of course, all this planning could come to nothing. Sunak will keep meeting members and wearing out his shoe leather (he has, in fact, literally worn a hole in his shoe), hoping that the polls are wrong and that Truss might implode. But those close to both candidates think that, barring a miracle, the race is nearly over and Truss is only weeks away from becoming Britain’s third female prime minister. ‘She’ll make it to No. 10, that’s certain,’ says one of her backers. ‘It’s making it to Easter that’s harder.’