How Liz Truss detonated her prime ministership in record time

There is a rare iron law in British politics. New prime ministers enjoy a honeymoon with the electorate. The soaring poll ratings can be short or long, but the instinctive immediate reaction of voters is to give a new ruler the thumbs up. Liz Truss has not just violated an iron law. She has blown it apart in the most spectacular act of arrogant folly in modern times.

Her tenure in Number 10 may be short but will be analysed with dark fascination by historians in years to come. How could Truss and her chosen new chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, have acted so recklessly and with such impatient speed, unleashing their laughably described “fiscal event” without thinking through the dire consequences? Why did they not realise there was no political space to cut the top rate of tax for the wealthiest? After triggering market turmoil, how could Kwarteng suggest that there will be more tax cuts to come? 

Depressingly for a post-Brexit economy that was already fragile, the answers have little to do with Truss’ tendency towards shallow impulsiveness or Kwartang’s wayward attention span. It was worse than that. The crisis that exploded around Truss within days of her becoming prime minister was part of a grim sequence in which the once resolutely pragmatic Conservative Party has come closer to being a revolutionary cult.