Isabel Oakeshott

The plot to put Rishi Sunak in No. 10

(Photo: Getty)

When Rishi Sunak resigned over Boris Johnson’s leadership, he acknowledged that it might be the end of his political career. His dreams of leading the Tory party already seemed over, thanks to his wealthy wife’s non-dom status. In a few short weeks, the Tory party did something quite extraordinary, and forgot about all that. Setting aside what would normally have been a career ending scandal, they very nearly made him prime minister. Now his supporters are trying to engineer something even more amazing: ousting the woman who beat him in the party leadership contest, and installing their man in No. 10.

The first step of their plan involves market turmoil on Monday morning. Sunak and his supporters hope that more financial panic will be enough to force Truss to quit – whether voluntarily; or via a threatened change in the party rule book that theoretically protects her for a year; or via some other mechanism they have yet to come up with.

As she sacked her Chancellor on Friday, Truss brazenly told him that he must be sacrificed to save her skin

Step two involves the coronation of King Rishi, the argument being that he is the only figure that can at least semi unite a furious and fractured parliamentary party. Jeremy Hunt may fancy his own chances, but is unacceptable to many MPs who backed Sunak. The idea is to keep him where he is – in No. 11 – while offering the other big Tory party leadership contest loser – Penny Mordaunt – another of the great offices of state (Foreign Secretary).

Step three involves convincing a mutinous parliamentary party that this new set up is better than the alternative: Truss/Hunt attempting to play political Siamese twins, when he has just publicly junked her entire economic agenda and she is Prino: prime minister in name only.

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