So she has gone … thank you for everything you did for the country … Liz Truss you’ll not be forgotten in a while! So we will have yet another Leader of the Conservative Party by this time next week (This isn’t a hostage to future striff at all!?!) who will no doubt make grandiose claims about unity, the honour of it all, the hard work ahead … and and and no one will be listening. He, I think it will be he (see below), will have as long as it takes him to cross Downing Street before the Conservative Party will collapse around him. Will he last as long as Liz Truss? It is not such a silly question.

The Boris Question

Will he Won’t he run? I’m sure there are parts of the Conservative Parliamentary Party (CPP) who get all hot and excited at this thought but my guess he is enjoying becoming very rich to bother with being Prime Minister again – plus he just doesn’t have the votes. So I don’t think he would run.

What About the Bakerite Wing of the CPP?

Last night Steve Baker was touring the TV interview booths talking as if he was a senior member of the Government, he’s not. Baker’s power has always been his ability to disrupt. He simply doesn’t have the votes to take a candidate into Downing Street. This means that the likes of Suella Braverman is unlikely to be able to get elected. I suspect that Kemi Badenoch won’t even try to run but rather save herself for the fights to come – the first being trying to keep her seat in a General Election in 2023

PM for PM?

The ever popular Penny Mordaunt has got to be a strong candidate. She certainly performs well at the dispatch box; she has a competent TV appearance but, and this is why I don’t think she’ll be elected, she hasn’t actually done anything. Yes she was defence Secretary for a few weeks but nothing more. We are heading into a winter of great confusion and strife so having a PM who is untested at the highest level really isn’t an option plus she couldn’t beat Liz Truss at the last CPP elections in the summer.

Time for Rishi

Cometh the hour Cometh the man – possibly. Rishi Sunak does have the advantage of coming a surprisingly close second to Liz Truss and he did warn everyone listening of what would happen under a Truss Premiership so of course he is bound to win – right? Well I’m not at all sure and even if he does whole sections of the CPP despise him for numerous reasons. If he does win then he will have to be very, very, lucky not to cause another crazy Tory war the moment he walks through the door at No. 10. I don’t any Tory has that luck anymore.

A.N. Other or None of the Above

Given the crazy nature of things at the moment a Gnome for PM may make as much sense as anything else that is going to happen over the next week. Meanwhile the world outside SW 1 is looking on and thinking …how did it come to this? The contempt that the CPP is showing to the electorate at large is breathtaking and I suspect the pressure from outside will become way too much. Perhaps not an election before the end of the year but I can’t see this holding together beyond the end of the year … maybe not that long. Over to His Majesty.