Dan Kitwood/PA
If you didn’t think we were being governed by children before, this should help to clear things up a bit. As per claims made by Tim Shipman in his new book, it is alleged that Boris Johnson had a novel suggestion for deciding who should replace Liz Truss as Prime Minister.
ALSO READ: Boris Johnson’s book is being upstaged on store shelves by a parody version
The shortest-lived PM in history barely completed seven weeks in the job – a tenure interrupted by the death of Queen Elizabeth II, no less – and her eventual resignation consigned the Tories to a losing battle, almost two years ahead of the General Election.
Despite desperate attempts to claw back public trust, the whole episode is cited as one of the reasons the Conservatives took such a trouncing during the vote in July. With Truss gone, and the Tories looking for their third Prime Minister in two months, a candidate emerged.
Rishi Sunak, who had (somehow) lost the internal leadership race to Liz Truss in the summer of 2022, was set to be anointed as the ‘safe pair of hands’ to guide the Blues into the next election cycle. However, according to Shipman, he faced one particular bizarre obstacle to power.
Boris Johnson, who had vacated Downing Street earlier in the year, was involved in the high-level discussions on what the party should do next. When it was jokingly suggested that Johnson and Sunak should ‘toss a coin’ do decide who should replace Truss, BoJo took it up a notch.
According to a passage in How Brexit Got Done and the Tories Were Undone, Johnson was only half-joking when he said that an arm-wrestle would be the fairest way to settle the debate – offering his arm towards Sunak who politely laughed things off and walked away.
Amid a series of other claims in Shipman’s book, he also states that Mr. Sunak ‘came close to resigning’ in late 2023, after serious doubts emerged about his ability to win a General Election. Well, at least he now knows to trust his gut instincts.
