Liz Truss entered the finishing straight of the Tory leadership race with the social media equivalent of tripping over her laces.
Truss and Rishi Sunak will battle it out over the coming weeks to be the UK’s next prime minister after finishing in the top two places after five rounds of voting by Tory MPs, with Penny Mordaunt eliminated from the election after a bitter contest in Westminster.
Truss is now the favourite to replace Boris Johnson at No.10, based on polling suggesting she is more popular with Tory party members who will now select their party leader.
Thanking supporters after she made it onto the final ballot, Truss tweeted: “Thank you for putting your trust in me. I’m ready to hit the ground from day one.”
The more common phrase is “hit the ground running”, and the tweet quickly became a meme.
The tweet with the odd phrasing was deleted, replaced with one promising a less painful start to her premiership.
The election has been littered with gaffes.
Sunak’s leadership run got off to a less than promising start after one of his backers accidentally posted instructions he appeared to have received from the campaign.
Paul Maynard, the Conservative MP for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, swiftly said he is backing Sunak’s push to succeed Boris Johnson – but didn’t fully grasp what he was supposed to do on Twitter.
In a now deleted tweet, the apparent instructions said: “If you’re happy, can you tweet and include the hashtag Ready4Rishi, and crucially the website Ready4rishi.com, and then your infographic below.”