Leaders | The Tory leadership

What kind of prime minister will Britain get?

It will be a technocrat who knows what to do, or a politician who knows how to do it

In these tumultuous times, running the Conservative Party is as hard as running the country. On September 5th Britain will get its fourth prime minister in six years. Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss will be handed the keys to 10 Downing Street by the grace of roughly 160,000 Tory party members as everyone else looks on. Whoever wins—and just now it seems likely to be Ms Truss—will inherit a country that is in a mess and a party that forced out its three previous leaders while they were still in office. It is not a record that breeds confidence.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Britain’s next prime minister”

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From the August 20th 2022 edition

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