Recent political events brought to mind another soap opera, though one more popular and longer lasting.
‘Dallas’ – an everyday tale of Texan oil millionaires – had viewers glued to their screens from the late 70s.
More viewers tuned in to learn ‘Who Shot JR?’ than took part in that year’s presidential election.
But by the 80’s, with ratings on the skids, the actor playing Bobby Ewing wanted out.
In the season finale he was mown down by a car and breathed his last surrounded by the entire Ewing Clan.
It was therefore something of a surprise when the following season ended with Bobby stepping out of the shower, larger than life. Apparently, the whole season in between had just been a dream.
Can the Tory party pull off the same trick?
Could it be that the melodrama of the last six weeks, the firing of not one but two cabinet ministers, more u-turns than can be counted, a tanking pound and spiralling mortgages, can be dismissed as nothing more than an unfortunate hallucination?
A nightmare from which happily the Conservative Party and the country can now awake?
Not even sure the Dallas scriptwriters would have attempted such a gambit.
Liz Truss became Prime Minister only six short weeks ago, by a handsome margin.
She inherited a healthy parliamentary majority but a party and a country which had been bewitched by Boris and was now bothered and bewildered.
Having road tested her policies over a near interminable leadership contest, she quickly assembled the most diverse cabinet in British history and was ready to get the country moving again. And then it all fell over.
If there is a lesson to be learned from the debacle of the last few weeks, it is simply that whatever budget or financial statement you seek to deliver you have to show the sums.
The markets won’t give you credit for assertion – take note Ms Sturgeon – you have to show the workings.
The arrival of Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor did much to calm the markets and arrest the spiralling cost of borrowing, primarily because he cancelled pretty much everything, including Rishi Sunak’s plan to cut the basic rate of income tax by a penny.
What happens next?
Almost as if the mini budget had indeed been a dream…
So, what happens next? Truth be told, we are in uncharted waters.
Changing party leaders/PMs between elections is not uncommon, but doing it twice is.
One might expect a general election, but there is no prospect of the next Conservative leader seeking a mandate from the people because that party leader would lose and lose big.
The polls are dire. No incoming leader wants to usurp Liz Truss’s record as the shortest serving PM.
A unity candidate is of course the answer.
The only hiccup, the absence of unity.
Each faction now believes it’s time for their candidate to pick up the fallen torch.
And all have an eye on the next election.
Few front benchers from John Major’s cabinet were around by the time David Cameron formed his first administration.
If the current crop of front runners don’t throw their bunnet in the ring this time and become PM they may remain but a footnote in history. It is even reported that Boris is flying back to sort things out…
The real question, perhaps the only question worth asking is, can the Conservative Party tear its attention away from its own navel and focus on the national interest?
Folks are tired of the melodrama.
They want a stable economy, affordable heating, better times. If the Tory party gets that, if it can stem the haemorrhaging then the party will live to fight another day.
If it can’t, then perhaps it doesn’t deserve to have another season on prime time.
Lord Duncan of Springbank is a Conservative peer and former Minister of State for Scotland.
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