Yes. I'm not a fan of the Conservatives (as is perhaps evident ), but Sunak has always seemed quite competent, whereas Truss has always seemed way out of her depth.

The distinction needs to be made between Conservative MPs (who wanted Sunak instead of Truss) and the wider Conservative party membership (who wanted Truss and not Sunak). The politicians aren't being racist, but they are being somewhat foolish in leaving the final decision up to their wider membership. The only reason Sunak won the next time around is because he's the only one who gathered enough backing from MPs, so the membership weren't given a choice. I believe the Conservative MPs deserve some credit here for the way they learned from their mistake and tweaked the rules this time around. Even so, it was a close run thing... if Johnson had managed to get 100 MPs backing him, then the membership would have chosen him to return as PM... leading to perhaps even greater chaos than we've seen already.

I'm not suggesting that a high percentage of the population is innately racist, more that many years of politicians and their friends in the media blaming foreigners for the woes of the country has dramatically increased antipathy towards immigrants across the population, such that a high percentage of people now vote for racist/xenophobic reasons. Perhaps I should have been clearer on this. And perhaps instead of nincompoops it might be kinder to reframe it as people whose opinions are easily manipulated. It would be interesting to see, in some alternative universe, what would have happened with the Brexit vote if the preceding years had been filled not with foreigner-bashing, but with the media lauding the invaluable contribution that immigrants make to the economy, and particularly as doctors and nurses within the beloved NHS. Unfortunately we will never know.