Here's the latest politics file by Argus politics reporter Ian Craig:

BY THE end of this week we’ll know who the final two candidates in the race to be our next prime minister will be.

Barring a massive upset one of them will be Boris Johnson - with Michael Gove or Jeremy Hunt likely to be in the unenviable task of standing against him.

As I write this there’s still six candidates in the race - but at least one will have been knocked out following a second ballot of Conservative Party members on Tuesday - with Rory Stewart, Sajid Javid and Dominic Raab all facing the chop.

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If the party was still in David Cameron’s ‘hug a hoodie’ phase Sajid Javid probably would have been in with a decent shot, but the recent shift to the right seems to have ruled him out, and, although half the internet seems to think Rory Stewart is the most interesting thing to happen since the Ice Bucket Challenge - and, to be fair, he has a pretty fascinating life story - in reality he’s destined for the ‘also ran’ file, this time round at least.

As for Dominic Raab, hands up if you can think of anything interesting to say about him. Anyone?

Although we’ve all been half-expecting Johnson - no, I won’t call him “Boris” like he’s some bloke down the pub and not a political force who has to be taken seriously, for better or worse - to slip up and derail his campaign with an ill-advised remark about someone’s wife or a 1970s racial slur, it seems like he can do no wrong in the eyes of the party.

This is a man with a history of gaffes, from the baffling but generally harmless to the downright offensive, who won’t answer questions about how many children he’s got and has recently taken the approach of keeping away from the limelight as much as possible.

But none of this really matters - it’s the party who will pick the new leader - and new prime minister by default - and if you’re already on board the Johnson train at this point it seems hard to imagine what would convince you to change tracks. It almost seems like he could turn up to one of the live debates covered in blood with a pentagram carved in his forehead and a decent portion of the party would say “oh Boris, that scamp”.

It’s a broken system that smacks more than a little bit of the “I didn’t vote for you” bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail but it’s the only one we’ve got.

Of course, there’s one thing which has been absent from anything involving the leadership contest so far - Wales.

Hands up if you’ve heard any one of the candidates even mention Wales, let alone set foot here since the contest kicked off?

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Boris Johnson made a half-hearted run at Clwyd South 22 years ago, Sajid Javid has apparently been to Newport a couple of times and made a token appearance at the Welsh Conservative conference last month, and Michael Gove’s wife - journalist Sarah Vine - is from Swansea.

But, aside from Rory Stewart promising to do one of his David Brent-esque walkabouts in Wales at the weekend - by which point he’s almost guaranteed to be out of the running anyway - that’s about it when it comes to Welsh credentials.

At least Theresa May made a point of talking up Snowdonia as a nice place for a walking holiday - even if it did give her odd ideas about elections.

So, once again, it looks like we’ll have yet another Conservative prime minister - and let’s be honest, it’s going to be Boris Johnson - to whom Wales barely registers on their radar.

Yes, it’s the job of Alun Cairns and his Welsh Office to make the case for Wales in Westminster - opinions on how effective they are at doing that are mixed, to say the least.

But the reality is, the fact that it’s not the great unwashed who will be picking our next PM, but Conservative Party members.

Just how many of them there are in Wales isn’t a matter of public record, but it’s a fair assumption that the number isn’t huge, especially in proportion to the party’s overall membership.

So really, there’s no incentive for Johnson, Gove, Hunt et al to be that concerned about Wales.

Electing a party leader is one thing, but when that leader will also be the prime minister of the entire UK - which stands for United Kingdom, remember - the fact that voting is reserved to a select few seems a deep injustice.

And as long as that continues Wales will continue to be sidelined.