The new incumbent at Number 10 Downing Street

Boris is gone, Liz is in. From today it's the Liz Truss show at Number 10. The remarkable thing about these two Conservative leaders is that neither of them was ever thought to be prime ministerial material when they were younger. People who knew them in their younger years are now saying it never entered their head that either of them would end up in Number 10. Well Boris made it by sheer exhibitionism and charisma and dogged in-your-face politics. Liz, on the other hand, doesn't have Boris's joie de vivre but she certainly looks a determined lady. In my view she wasn't a great Foreign Secretary, as Rishi Sunak, the failed would-be prime minister, claimed, but then neither was Boris Johnson. Both lacked the Peter Carrington/Douglas Hurd natural dignity and presence. Carringon and Hurd were the ultimate conservative party spokesmen for their country. They had what it takes to be foreign secretary of the United Kingdom. Class sums it up in one word. Neither Boris nor Liz did. Now we have to wait and see whether Boris's sucessor at Number 10 is going to have the necessary hutzpah to take control of this country's mass of problems, economic and social, and get us out of the mess we have been sinking into for the last three years. If Liz wants to be another Maggie Thatcher, she has her work cut out. I can't see Putin thinking of her as the Iron Lady. But let's see.