While Boris Johnson should stay as Prime Minister, in Liz we must now Truss, says Dan Wootton

Well, I knew it was a mistake. I warned them.

But the decision by Conservative MPs to depose Boris Johnson – less than three years after a historic landslide – looks more insane by the day.

The Prime Minister’s swashbuckling and energetic PMQs farewell today just emphasised that point further.

And the results of my major poll asking who you want to be Prime Minister versus the final three leadership contenders were extraordinary. There were over 60,000 votes, with an overwhelming 49 per cent backing Boris Johnson to stay in the job.

But Boris will soon be out of Number 10, for a while at least, and the battle to be PM could not be any clearer.

On the one hand there’s the low tax/small state Liz Truss, the most experienced of all current serving Cabinet ministers who wants to bring Thatcherite principles back into the Conservative leadership.

Then there’s the Boris backstabber-in-chief Fishy Rishi Sunak, a big state/high tax former Chancellor with a super-rich wife and love of a Californian lifestyle who increased the UK’s tax burden to the highest it’s been in 70 years.

And despite the promise of a positive campaign that would avoid blue on blue attacks, Sunak posted a video within hours of the result claiming Truss would lose to Labour.

If that’s positive, I hate to see what’s coming when he sees how far behind he lags among Tory members.

As I’ve written in a new column for MailOnline tonight:

"While I believe the coup against Boris will be seen as a historic mistake, like the electorate turning on Winston Churchill after World War Two, I am now unequivocal in my belief that Truss must be the next Prime Minister of the UK."

Sunak is slick but completely soulless; like a droid of a political candidate dreamed up in a lab and controlled by the globalist organisations like the WEF and the WHO that I’ve come to distrust.

By contrast, I’m secure in the knowledge that the current Foreign Secretary – the most experienced member of the Cabinet – was opposed to unnecessary Covid lockdowns and will take the fight to Russia and China.

On the economy, it’s a total no brainer.

Sunak has led us to hell in a hand basket with incessant multi-billion giveaways funded by devastating tax rises.

Truss has pledged to cut taxes and reduce the size of the state, the entire purpose of the Conservative party.

When it comes to the culture wars, Truss has fought for the rights of women in her equalities brief and is resolutely anti-woke.

Sunak wasn’t even prepared to define what a woman is in a car crash TV interview.

As an ardent Brexiteer, it may seem counterintuitive to back the candidate who voted to remain.

But in her actions as the International Trade Secretary, Truss did more than virtually any other minister to prove she believes in the Brexit dividend.

My private conversations with her Cabinet colleagues have reassured me that she is the safest bet to secure Brexit against the force of the deep state rejoiner blob, which poses such a threat to this country.

Truss is not the finished article, I admit that.

But neither was her political inspiration Margaret Thatcher when she first became Conservative leader.

The trick now is for Truss, if she wins, which she should do, to emulate the approach of the Iron Lady and not crumble like Theresa May the moment she enters Number 10.

The stakes could not be higher – the future of our great country hangs in the balance.