I’M not a betting woman - apart from an annual doomed-to-failure flutter on the Grand National - but I’m sorely tempted to bung a tenner on Jacob Rees-Mogg becoming the next leader of the Conservative Party.

Mr Rees-Mogg, who has been dubbed the MP for the 18th century, is riding high in the public’s opinion; his forthright and erudite views coupled with his ability to hold his own with television interviewers - and to do it with grace and humour - are proving increasingly popular.

Eton-educated, Latin maxim-spouting, rolling in money, dressed like Bertie Wooster, taking his children’s nanny out canvassing with him on the campaign trail, and the scion of a wealthy Establishment family, on paper he ticks precisely zero boxes for what a modern political leader should be.

And yet... And yet, he has undeniably struck a chord with the public; and calls for him to take over from Theresa May as Tory leader are becoming increasingly loud.

The gentleman himself doth protest a little, saying this week: “I unequivocally support Theresa May and I do not covet her job.” Maybe not, squire, but there are a lot of despairing Conservatives out there who would love you to have it.

Yesterday, Mr Rees-Mogg laid out in The Daily Telegraph his vision of what modern Conservatism should be - and it was mightily persuasive. “The instruments of government are there to serve, not command,” he declared, no doubt to frenzied nods of approval from thousands of toast and Oxford marmalade-scoffing Telegraph readers that morning.

There is no money except for that earned in the private sector; people don’t want to live in tower blocks - but since the Seond World War officialdom has wanted them to; we must tackle monopolies; and society is built from the bottom up, not the top down. Mr Rees-Mogg had plenty more to say about taxation (and especially the market-haltingly pernicious stamp duty), the nanny state and governments’ moral obligations to the people they serve. It was all stirring stuff - and one of the best analyses of modern conservatism I have read in many a while. Mrs May might well have apparently “giggled’ (if you can imagine such a thing) when it was suggested Mr Rees-Mogg be promoted from the back benches - but the threat to her already severely weakened position should, for her, be no laughing matter.

For (like Jeremy Corbyn but cleverer and much better dressed) Jacob Rees-Mogg is a true conviction politician; and that is what increasingly appeals to an electorate jaded by evasive, cliche-ridden career politicians.

Rees-Mogg may trot out Latin maxims (his first ever tweet was in Latin - but he is already the most-followed Tory MP by a country mile) and carry a fob watch in his Savile Row waistcoat but he is very much his own man - and people like and respect that. He has become the acceptable face of Tory toffness.

In the past couple of years, the most unlikely things have happened. Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, Donald Trump as US president; Brexit; and Leicester City winning whatever it was they won, to name but a few recent “turn-up-for-the-books” results. In such a climate, I can see no reason why Jacob Rees-Mogg cannot come storming up on the rails to take the poisoned chalice that is the leadership of the Tory party.

I hope he does. A recent convert, he has swiftly become the latest darling of social media - and these days that matters a lot - and I would expect him to capitalise on that over the coming months. He may protest that he has no ambitions beyond being a back bench MP, but many other people do on his behalf; and he would do well to take them seriously.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man - and for a growing number of Conservatives, Mr Rees-Mogg’s hour has indeed come. Talk of Mogg-mentum is rife, and the man himself is riding a wave of approval among Conservtives, which has only been enhanced by his sparkling Telegraph article.

Let’s hope he has the Mogg-mentum to ride that wave further. Or, as the Latin has it, Carpe Diem, Jacob.