At the start of September, it was no secret who would be the next leader of the Tory party. What I don't think anyone expected was that by the start of November we'd have a completely different Prime Minister. When you consider that the first couple of weeks of Liz Truss's reign as PM were taken up with Her Majesty, The Queen's funeral, what has happened is almost unbelieveable.
Truss made some absolutely basic schoolboy errors on taking charge. When you take over mid term, you have no mandate for new policies. When you have come through a bruising, over long contest, you need to heal the wounds in your party. When you don't have the majority of MP's on your side, you need to make allies fast. Truss ignored these rules. She also alienated the civil service by sacking some high level, long term staff. She made a whole stack of enemies that she didn't need to alienate. When she took power, I wrote my misgivings and the mistakes I thought she made. She fell into all the traps that I suggested she should avoid and more. I made the following prediction
"I predicted in January that Truss would become PM in the summer. I predict that she won't be in two years."I didn't realise that it would be less than two months.
So what can we deduce about the next PM. The Tories have announced that they will be in place within a week. I see it as a straight face off between Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak. My money would be on Mordaunt, but the Tory MP's are a funny lot and so I'd not be overly surprised whoever they pick. The current odds are most interesting.
I'd not argue with the bookies.
I
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