After the shortest-ever term as Britain’s prime minister, how did a politician who spent 12 years in government, including in many key roles, make such a historic mess of the top job?
It may not have been the most troubling feature of Liz Truss’s premiership but the need to check whether she was still in office was a gathering distraction for anyone, including her cabinet colleagues, interested in who was running the country. A month ago, after the disastrous mini-budget, no one was sure if she could survive until the next election. Thereafter, the timeframe rapidly narrowed until the question was whether she would last the day.
There was a brief holiday from reality during the party conference in Birmingham, when the ship had already hit the iceberg and yet, in a surreal atmosphere of denialism, the band played on. But on Thursday, six days after she had been forced to sack her ideological soulmate Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor, and the day after home secretary Suella Braverman resigned, we got the answer.