“To lose one Prime Minister may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” That aphorism — offered with apologies to Oscar Wilde — springs to mind as Prime Minister Liz Truss stepped outside the door of Downing Street this afternoon to announce her imminent resignation, some four months after her predecessor, Boris Johnson, left No 10.

“Given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” the Prime Minister stated. “I have therefore spoken to His Majesty The King to notify him that I am resigning as Leader of the Conservative Party.”

Ms. Truss will remain in harness until next Friday, when a new leader and prime minister will be announced. That makes five  premiers in six years, four chancellors of the exchequer in as many months, two home secretaries . . . the numbers stagger. The Conservative Party cannot conserve high profile ministers, let alone stand faithful to principle.

The selection process will involve the party’s management organization, the 1922 Committee. We can speculate, though,  on three potential candidates, beginning with the Leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, who came third in the July selection process among Conservative MPs.

Ms. Mordaunt gave a strong performance on Monday, as she stepped in for Premier Truss at the despatch box. Even Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer was complimentary. “Under this Tory Government, everybody gets to be Prime Minister for 15 minutes,” he said.

The principal problem with Ms. Mordaunt is her sympathies with woke culture. She also faced criticisms at the time of the “first” leadership race of 2022. Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost expressed “grave reservations,” noting Ms. Mordaunt was absent when she was his deputy on the independence file.

Lord Frost had to ask then prime minister Boris Johnson to replace her. Lord Daniel Moylan and Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan spoke of similar concerns. I am not one for casting stones gratuitously; but Tories should not seem so eager to rush from one leadership disaster to another.

The second potential candidate is the former chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, whom Ms. Truss defeated in the previous leadership race (but who came first in the MP-selection round). Mr. Sunak seems an apt fit, since his economic policies of high taxes to conform to the Establishment consensus, have not-so-surreptitiously unseated “Trussonomics,” that is, her belief that low taxes encourage economic growth.

The trouble with Mr. Sunak begins with those BoJo supporters who credit him with cashiering their Prime Minister. Will Truss supporters equally balk, that Mr. Sunak’s hand can be detected in the pressure that saw Truss hounded from office?

Both Ms. Mordaunt and Mr. Sunak have their strengths and weaknesses. To choose one over the other may mean little more than “six of one, half-a-dozen of another.” What is almost definitely certain is that the early prospects of a low tax, smaller state Britain, that gave faint promise to a Truss Ministry, are off the table, at least for now. 

As for the third candidate, why, it is no less than Boris Johnson himself. Rumors are that he is considering a run for his former job, curtailing his holidays in the Caribbean and hightailing it back to Britain. Sounds like the criminal returning to the scene of his crime.

Too strong? What Mr. Johnson has done to the Conservative Party is, I say, nothing less than a crime. Or, to be fair, he has been one of the contributors to the demise of the once proud Conservative brand, refurbished under Margaret Thatcher. List David Cameron and Theresa May as collaborators, alongside a cast of minor miscreants.

Just consider the worst policies of recent months. Covid lockdowns. Fantastically expensive furlough programs, to the tune of £500+ billion. Which, in turn, led to double-digit inflation and the current cost-of-living crisis.

Then there is the energy crisis, of low supplies and high costs — with the prospect of blackouts during the coldest days in January and February. Nuclear and coal-fired generation plants taken offline and dismantled — all sacrificed on the altar of Carbon Neutrality.

And the high priest in this new UK religion of anthropomorphic climate change? None other than one Boris Johnson. Add in the “unconservative” response to immigration and crime, and the assault upon British heritage. Don’t forget bureaucratic bloat.

It would be a fitting act of poetic justice to see BoJo return to office, so that he can wear the shame of Britain’s demise he so richly deserves. For those who believe in his redemption, may I remind them of the other “Johnson,” Samuel.

In his “Life” of the great essayist and lexicographer, James Boswell recounted this reflection. “A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.”

What is plainly evident is that without a conservative platform, let alone a consistent application of a conservative program, it matters little who leads the Tories. 

That Conservatives have been so careless in safeguarding the integrity of their own political party, not to speak of the stewardship of the United Kingdom, simply sounds the death knell of official Toryism. 

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