It may not have felt that way, but for Rishi Sunak getting there was the easy part. After just seven years in parliament the former chancellor is Britain’s next prime minister, the third this year, his success owing much to his being more spectacularly and rapidly vindicated in his analysis of Liz Truss’s economic strategy than even her wildest critics could have imagined.
With neither of his rivals making it to a ballot, Sunak has won the job without a vote. Boris Johnson’s abandonment of the contest, either because he did not meet the nomination threshold, or possibly because while he just met it he could feel the tide was running away from him, is a relief. The UK has had enough entertainment for a generation and now desperately needs a period of undramatic stable government.