When it all began, more than seven weeks ago, with Liz Truss declaring at her campaign launch that she would “be ready to be Prime Minister of the UK from day one”, it did not look remotely likely that such an arrival in No 10 would ever come to pass.

The “Liz for leader” launch was amateurish and chaotic, and did not bode well. Truss was introduced by the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, but for an excruciating minute she failed to appear. Ready to serve, perhaps, but not quite ready to explain why she should.

When she did turn up, Truss, the foreign secretary, stumbled over her words, at one point mentioning “Putin’s appalling war in Ru … Ukraine”. Afterwards, she couldn’t find her way out of the room, and headed straight for a window.

Truss’s early wrong turns contrasted – and coincided – with a surge of support for the initially more assured Penny Mordaunt. While Rishi Sunak topped the ballot of Tory MPs at every stage, the ex-defence secretary appeared, during her brief moment in the sun, to be the more likely heir to Margaret Thatcher than Truss.

Wrapping herself in the union jack at her PM4PM launch the day before Truss’s event, Mordaunt had stirred Tory emotions, recalling having watched the Falklands fleet sail out off Portsmouth when she was a young girl.

The image, and her long-held support for Brexit, helped power her for a short period into second place behind Sunak in the MPs’ ballot.

For Truss, in the early days while the contest was focused in Westminster it all seemed an unequal struggle. She was criticised for lacking polish and appeal, and for sounding wooden.