Speaking later to the press, Mr. Graham was asked whether he would accept that the whole situation was a “dog’s dinner”. “It’s certainly not a circumstance that I would wish to see,” he said.

Ms. Truss’s departure is the final blow to the current government, which has seen several high profile resignations in recent days. Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was compelled to step down last Friday following a botched mini-budget that had rattled markets.

Just on Thursday, Home Secretary Suella Braverman had resigned, ostensibly because she had not followed security protocols while sending an email. However in her publicly posted letter she had said that she had “concerns” about the government’s “direction”.

Also on Thursday, were chaotic scenes in the British Parliament, with reports of Tory leaders allegedly manhandling MPs in an attempt to make them support the government during a vote on fracking that had been introduced by Labour. In all of this , there was also confusion about whether the Conservative Chief Whip and Deputy Whip had resigned (it was later confirmed that they had not). Shortly after Ms. Truss’s resignation was announced on Thursday, reports emerged that former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was planning a return to No.10. Mr. Johnson believed it was in the “national interest”, The Times reported. It was Mr. Johnson being ousted from office in early July that had set off a contest through August that brought Ms. Truss to her leadership role after she won a majority of the some 1,60,000 votes from Conservative members.

Several Tory MPs tweeted their support for Mr. Johnson on Thursday afternoon, citing the fact that he was the only one who had won a general election and had a nationwide mandate.

The names of several contenders from the August race resurfaced on Thursday — including former Chancellor Rishi Sunak. However, Mr. Sunak had resigned from Mr. Johnson’s Cabinet, unlike Ms. Truss, who had stayed on as Foreign Secretary. Mr. Sunak’s “disloyalty” to Mr. Johnson was a factor in his loss to Ms. Truss in the summer and it is a challenge he will still need to overcome in any intra-party contest. Other names doing the rounds on Thursday included Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt, Ms. Braverman, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and International Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch.

Pitching the notion that Labour would form a stable government, the party’s leader Kier Starmer said on Thursday that the Conservative party had done “huge damage” to the reputation of the country and that the public were dealing with higher prices and mortgages.

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