In the previous contest, there were many viable candidates, of which two went through to the final stage. This resulted in a ballot of all registered members of the Conservative party. This process took weeks and was criticised as a waste of time by many, leaving a power vacuum during the recent cost of living crisis.

What the members of the party want does not always align with what elected MPs think is best, nor what the public as a whole believes.

This time around, the requirements to be eligible to proceed in the contest were tightened - candidates needed 100 MPs supporting them. This was designed to speed up the process considerably.

At the deadline, Rishi was the only candidate that met the requirements, so he won by default, and there was no need to have a ballot of the members.

The previous 'run off' had many candidates where the one with the fewest votes (by MPs) was eliminated until there were 2 and then those 2 candidates were put forward to members of the Conservative party (80,000 members).

Party members "overwhelmingly" voted Truss. Rishi Sunak isn't liked by the people that matter most - the party members, and seemingly, the electorate.

Basically the Tory party is back where it was under John Major in the 90s. In-fighting and completely ignoring what the electorate think. It's odds on that Labour will get into power in 2024, not because they have the plan and the policies, but simply they're not the Tories.

It really is a case of 'those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. And here the Tories are. Arguably the last time Labour got elected on their own merit was many, many decades ago.

Frankly it's tedious to hear adversarial politics in Britain. But that's all we're going to get from the Labour Party for the next 2 years. They could be laying out policies, preparing for government, being an adult political party, and ignoring the Tories, because frankly, no one cares about the Tories at the moment. But Labour won't do that.

UK politics is a sewer.

Because last time the Conservative party members had a vote and Liz Truss stood on a platform intended to appeal primarily to them. The reason she had to depart was because it tuens out she actually believed what she was saying and attempted to implement policies that were widely regarded by the markets and everyone else as, well, utterly batshit.

The Conservative Party's rules for electing a new leader say that the party's MPs cast votes for candidates in successive rounds, with the candidate getting fewest votes in each round dropping out, until there are only two left. The party's wider membership (i.e. members of the public who have paid the membership fee) then vote to decide which of those two get the job.

Last time, Sunak got the most votes among MPs by some margin, with Truss coming second; but Truss won when the vote was put to the party members (possibly because they were very pro-Boris Johnson, and regarded Sunak as disloyal, seeing as it was his resignation that effectively forced Johnson's).

This time, Sunak was the only candidate to get enough nominations to run at all, so he won by default (though the number of nominations he got showed he was again the clear favourite among the party's MPs).

Because the party membership voted for Truss instead of him - they get to choose between the top two candidates the MPs select. Party membership is a lot smaller group than primary voters in the U.S. Why did the party pick Truss? Maybe they were uncomfortable with having someone non-white. Maybe they thought Truss could connect better to the electorate. Maybe they preferred her policy ideas.