It would usually be strange, not to say discourteous, to ask, little more than a week in, how long the new Prime Minister might conceivably last. But this is the era of short stays. Theresa May and Boris Johnson managed three years each and Liz Truss just 50 days. Rishi Sunak now leads a fragmented and fractious party, and so it is more than troublemaking to ask how long he might have.
There are some early signs that the Tory party knows it has to settle down. Sunak as Prime Minister and Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor is the most serious face a Tory government has presented for some time. The former was fluent in his first outing at Prime Minister’s Questions and his backbench support was united and vocal.
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