Grassroots members and supporters of the Conservative Party have been put back in their place by the party’s parliamentary elite, with Liz Truss ousted and an establishment premier likely to replace her.

Truss was hardly a staunch conservative given her strenuous support for Remain during the Brexit referendum, immediate postponement of any action against the EU over its behaviour in Northern Ireland, and desire to increase the country’s already record-high levels of immigration.

However, she was elected Conservative leader by ordinary Conservative Party members — against the wishes of the MPs who make up the parliamentary party, who wanted Rishi Sunak — on a platform of mild tax cuts and fracking for energy independence which was considered radical by the low standards of right-wing politics in the United Kingdom.

Even this unremarkable agenda proved unacceptable for the so-called “blob” of Cameroon MPs, scarcely indistinguishable from the Blairite MPs who controlled British politics during the New Labour era, and Truss was forced to reverse virtually every tax cut or tax rise cancellation she put forward in a “mini-budget” shortly after announcing it.