July 2022 leadership election and Liz Truss's premiership On 7 July 2022,
Boris Johnson resigned as Conservative leader and Prime Minister after
dozens of ministers resigned from his government following a slew of scandals and controversies, including
Partygate, that marred the final few months of his premiership, culminating in the
Chris Pincher scandal. A
leadership election was triggered to replace him, in which
Rishi Sunak and
Liz Truss were the final two candidates to be put forward to party members after a series of MPs' ballots. Truss won the contest, beating Sunak in the members' vote 57% to 43%. She assumed leadership of the party on 5 September 2022, and became Prime Minister the following day. Truss's premiership would turn out to be the shortest of any Prime Minister in history, lasting just 49 days. Truss's tenure oversaw the
death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, which caused government business to be suspended during the 10-day
national mourning period from 8–19 September. On 23 September 2022, in response to the
cost-of-living crisis, Truss's
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced a '
mini-budget', which introduced large-scale tax cuts and borrowing. It caused the value of
pound sterling to crash, sliding to an all-time low against the
US dollar. The mini-budget was widely criticised and its policies were gradually reversed over the following three weeks. The Conservatives' opinion poll ratings also began to fall sharply in the weeks following the announcement, dipping to around 20% as they trailed
Labour by over 30% in some polls. Truss dismissed Kwarteng without explanation on 14 October 2022 and replaced him with
Jeremy Hunt. By 17 October, pressure was beginning to mount on Truss's premiership and five Conservative MPs were calling for her resignation. On 19 October, Home Secretary
Suella Braverman resigned after admitting to having used her personal email address to send a Cabinet document and her resignation letter was highly critical of
Truss's government. Later that evening, a parliamentary vote on a debate to ban
fracking — which was opposed by the government — descended into chaos over confusion whether it was being treated as a confidence vote in the government, compounded by speculation that the chief whip and deputy chief whip had resigned, and by allegations, later refuted, that some Conservative MPs had been manhandled in the division lobby. On 20 October, the following day, Truss announced she would resign as Prime Minister and Conservative leader shortly, triggering a
second leadership election to find her replacement.
October 2022 leadership election and Rishi Sunak's premiership The timetable for the October 2022 leadership election was much shorter than the July one. An expedited process was set out; candidates were required to obtain 100 nominations from fellow Conservative MPs before 2pm on 24 October, and an MPs' ballot followed by an online members' ballot was to be held shortly thereafter if more than one candidate received more than 100 nominations. Only two candidates announced their intention to stand: Sunak and
Penny Mordaunt. There was intensive speculation that Johnson would initiate a bid for a return to the top post; at one point he was expected to stand and even received 62 nominations from MPs, but he subsequently declined to enter the contest. As only Sunak met the required threshold among MPs, receiving 197 nominations to Mordaunt's 27, Mordaunt withdrew from the leadership contest two minutes before nominations closed and Sunak was left the only candidate remaining, enabling him to win the contest and become Conservative leader without an MPs' ballot or members' vote. Sunak became Prime Minister the next day, on 25 October. In his first speech as Prime Minister, Sunak said that Truss "was not wrong" to want to improve growth and that he "admired her restlessness to create change", but admitted that "
some mistakes were made", and that he was elected prime minister in part to fix them. He promised to "place economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government's agenda". In an almost immediate reversal of Truss's policy, Sunak reinstated the ban on
fracking on 26 October 2022 as outlined in the
2019 Conservative manifesto. Sunak was faced with the task of rebuilding the Conservatives' reputation which had been significantly damaged by the
controversies and scandals of the previous year and the
Truss ministry. While their poll ratings recovered slightly over the following months, it still wasn't enough to bring them back to pre-Truss levels. Sunak contested his first
local elections as leader on 4 May 2023, where the Conservatives suffered heavy losses. Two months later, on 20 July 2023, they lost two seats in by-elections;
one to Labour and
one to the Liberal Democrats. Their fortunes remained unchanged throughout policy changes of the following year, such as the shelving of the
HS2 northern phase in October. The Conservatives lost two further seats in by-elections on 15 February 2024. In March 2024, there were suggestions that Sunak could face a leadership challenge before the upcoming
general election — which was expected within the calendar year — if the Conservatives perform poorly at the
local elections on 2 May. Sunak however said he would resist a challenge, even if that ends up being the case. As predicted, 2 May saw grim showing for the Conservatives, who suffered their worst local election results since
1996. Additionally, they lost another seat to Labour in the
Blackpool South by-election, and narrowly lost the
West Midlands mayoral election in a knife-edge vote. Sunak's premiership was described as more stable than that of his two predecessors, while still not being able to represent a turnaround for the Conservatives.
2024 general election On 22 May 2024, in a surprise announcement, Sunak called a
general election for 4 July. giving his final speech as Prime Minister on 5 July 2024Labour won the general election in a landslide, ending 14 years of Conservative government. Sunak conceded the election at 4:40 am on 5 July. The Conservatives experienced the largest defeat in its history, being reduced to 121 seats on a vote share of 23.7 per cent. It lost 244 seats, including those of twelve Cabinet ministers and that of former Prime Minister Truss. It also lost all its seats in Wales. Subsequently, Sunak said in his final speech as Prime Minister that he would resign as leader of the party once a successor was elected. ==Campaign==