Prime Minister Liz Truss resigns: Tories must now choose Rishi Sunak as next leader – Scotsman comment

Following the resignation of Liz Truss, the most important thing the United Kingdom needs now is simple: stability.

After Boris Johnson’s shambolic, mendacious premiership and Truss’s 45-day car crash, the Conservatives need to act quickly and decisively to restore calm.

The Scotsman’s preference would be for an immediate general election. However, failing that, Tory MPs should unite behind their best potential leader, allow them a few months to set out their stall, and then agree to a spring election so the public can have their say. Barring some extraordinary turnaround, this will lead to a Tory defeat, but they would at least stand a chance of salvaging something from the ruins of the party’s reputation.

The best candidate for leader should be obvious. Rather than an inexperienced MP from the right of the party – like Kemi Badenoch or Suella Braverman – or a ridiculous return to Johnson, it should be a serious politician for extremely serious times. And that means Rishi Sunak, who as Chancellor introduced the furlough scheme and other measures which helped save many jobs and shore up the economy during the Covid crisis.

He should also retain Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor, given his steadying effect on the government and the markets was clear. And the Cabinet should be filled with similarly pragmatic politicians, not populists who seek advantage by stoking culture wars and antagonising our closest allies in Europe.

If Sunak does take over, it might be tempting for him to try to see out the two years until the next planned general election, but this would be wrong and also a tactical mistake. The 2019 election cannot be used by a third Prime Minister as a mandate, particularly as Hunt is expected to make deep cuts to public spending, potentially ushering in a new age of austerity. No one voted for this.

Given the state of the economy, spending two years attempting to justify themselves to an increasingly discontented public would not be in the Conservatives’ best interest. There are times when parties need to realise a spell in opposition is best for them and all concerned. Voters will not soon forget the current chaos.

However, if the Tories again spurn Sunak and decide to continue the mayhem by choosing a Truss-like figure or re-embracing Johnson – even as he faces a parliament inquiry into whether he deliberately misled MPs – they may well discover the party has not yet reached its point of maximum danger. The ‘Year of Three Prime Ministers’ could yet signal a historic shift in British politics, on a par with the decline of the old Liberal party after the First World War.

Rishi Sunak should be the obvious choice for the next Conservative leader (Picture: Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)

But, for the moment, as we head into the winter with an economy reeling from high energy prices, we need an experienced politician in charge, not someone who is still learning the ropes.

The news that a Russian aircraft released a missile near an unarmed RAF plane patrolling the Black Sea last month offers an example of the kind of scenario the UK’s new leader may face. Russia has said this was the result of a “technical malfunction”, an explanation the UK appears to have accepted. However, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace warned it was a “reminder of quite how dangerous things can be when you choose to use your fighters in the manner that the Russians have done over many periods of time”.

Particularly when international tensions are high, wars can be started by accident, by recklessness and by leaders who make bad decisions under pressure.

The UK desperately needs a Prime Minister capable of inspiring confidence – not just in his own party but the financial markets and the country at large – and of making calm, rational decisions, based not on ideology but hard evidence and expert advice, about events of the utmost seriousness.