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  Sky News says that the resignation speech of Ms Truss lasted ninety seconds. For some it must have seemed like a lifetime, for others it just flew by. By any standard, it was grim. None of her colleagues appeared with her, not even Larry the No 10 mouser showed up. Her attempt at an Apologia was no more than a few sentences and was simply excruciating. Despite the enormous media presence, there was silence when she finished. Not a single question was directed to her back as she re-entered No.10. Her tenure as Prime Minister, the shortest in the history of the Office, can still be divided into three parts. Protocol, custom and practice meant that she officially became Prime Minister when meeting the Queen on September 6. Forty-eight hours later the Queen was dead. Truss had  promised in the course of the Tory leadership campaign that she was going to hit the ground running, but very few expected her to so quickly take out a woman who had managed quite well for 96 years. One. This  chapter of her 44-day stint was almost entirely taken up by an orgy of institutional and ornamental grief for the latest of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha monarchs to pop their clogs. In the dim past there were John O’ Groats to Land’s End ‘races’, over the 867 miles between the two points. The eleven-day funeral odyssey to Windsor was the closest modern equivalent. It ground on and on, whereas Government ground to a halt. But it was not uneventful, in the early days of the reign of Elizabeth of Downing Street, her newly-installed Chancellor exhibited peculiar behaviour. Sitting in a pew at the Memorial Service in Westminster Abbey, laughing while making or taking a call on his mobile phone. As a participant on University Challenge in 1995, he became notable for audibly saying ‘fuck’ twice, during the programme. He had now been in office just 12 days, but had been extremely close to Truss for many years. Two. With the monarch disposed of came the next phase. Four days later the dingbat Kwarteng, stood up in the House of Commons and delivered his mini-budget, which immediately crashed Sterling to a historical low against the Dollar and, had it not been for intervention by the Bank of England ,would have collapsed some of the UK’s biggest pension funds.  In the cacophony of panic and derision that followed, Truss stood by her man for a whole 25 days of incremental hysteria and insanity, until October 14 when she summoned him from an IMF conference in New York and sacked him as soon as he entered British airspace. One undenied version being that he learned of his fate on Twitter. Three. While her statement on the beheading of the Chancellor, ascribed no blame to him or herself for the financial meltdown he and she had caused, a head was needed and it was not going to be hers. She installed Tory nice-guy Jeremy Hunt former Minister and twice failed candidate for the top job, as Chancellor.  She was now holding on by her fingertips, not yet her nails. Hunt’s political soundtrack is essentially lounge-lizard music and his designated role was essentially to glide fragrantly through the Treasury and make soothing noises in the Commons and in backbench caucuses. By the time Truss stood up at Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday 19 October, hers and Kwarteng’s mini-budget which had been concocted  without reference to any other member of Cabinet, was demolished with but one exception. Hunt had not touched the measure lifting the cap on Banker’s bonuses.  In response to baiting by Starmer, who is by no means ever more than a three-star performer at the Dispatch Box, she lost it completely. Asked whether the “triple-lock” on Pensions would be maintained, she virtually yelled “Yes”. The look on Hunt’s face told it all. Installed as her minder, he had only a day previously declined to give such a guarantee, as had Downing Street. By the time she sat down, she was irretrievably washed up on the rocks. The Tory party may have been finished with her but she wasn’t finished with it. The decision to oppose the motion on fracking that same evening and the manner in which it was handled, led to riotous behaviour within the inner sanctum of the Members’ Lobby, almost as brutal as Bosworth Field. In seeking to retain the Crown, members of the Cabinet had clearly lost their marbles. Hours later, actually in the middle of the night, Downing Street  issued a Statement which ludicrously attempted to ‘clarify’ whether the fracking vote which led to a genuine punch-up, was or was not a ‘confidence vote’.  The flapping of the Men in White Coats now reached a crescendo. The constant flow of gibberish could no longer be tolerated. Into Downing Street in mid-morning on Thursday went the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Tory 1922 Committee, the Chair of the Tory Party, the Men in Dark Suits.  and every jobsworth was required to iron out a pathway to replace her, in no more than seven days or even as early as Monday. Once they went in, they were not coming out until she agreed to stand down. She did not jump, she was pushed. At 2.30 in the afternoon, she came, she smiled a little whiningly and  she scuttled away. Graham Brady,  Chairman of the 1922 Committee already had the mechanism ready for replacing her by the time he spoke to the media a couple of hours later. The 100-plus number for nomination, squeezes Johnson probably too hard to allow him run. He could conceivably reach that threshold but he is too lazy to do anything other than let the ‘ERG/Bruges Group’  do the heavy lifting for him. He will enjoy basking in the the plaudits of this gruesome mob,  but he is in that peculiar Trumpian position: the risk of getting on the ballot and then losing is more than his ego could

Today, September 5 2022,  all over Little England, the blackberry-jam-making sessions of the local Women’s Institutes were paused shortly before 12.00 noon. The tea urns and their cosies had been readied in anticipation. The members seated themselves before the old portable televisions used on such occasions, to watch the anointing of  Liz Truss MP as Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party and by extension, the New Prime Minister. For the average Tory vote, this means that their prayers of: ‘Make it Stop’ seem to have been finally answered. Whatever comfort this may give the faithful, they seem blissfully unaware that for the ‘natural party of Government’  occupancy of Downing Street this time around, places them not so much in the driving seat, as in the last chance saloon. In choosing their new leader, the Tories contrived to empty their chocolate selection box, leaving them just just one vile acidic ‘strawberry cream’ and a rock hard indigestible (that can glue together the jaws of a T-Rex)  to choose from.  I say good luck to them. Ms Truss attended Merton College, Oxford. Now, no one in their right mind is going to throw about the term ‘red-brick’ about Merton. No College whose Statutes were being drawn up in the 1260s should be subjected to such abuse.  Certainly, she attended, but your present writer must respectfully refrain from saying she was educated there, all objective evidence being to the contrary.  Truss has recently celebrated her forty-seventh birthday. This means that she was born just four years before Merton belatedly first admitted women students.  By the time she entered, Merton’s brave new world was still in infancy. Seven-hundred-year-old Oxford colleges do not adopt tumultuous change overnight. The institutional upheaval of 1979 most certainly drew a whole cohort of wonderful scholars into the Merton fold, but it was a process of kerfuffle and anxiety about equality, inclusiveness and sensitivity to scrutiny. Would she have cut the mustard at Lady Margaret Hall (before it admitted men for the first time in 1979) ? Ms Truss’ output as a politician suggests the venerable Merton was not merely compelled to isolate some of its intake to a virtual red-brick extension but, educationally speaking, had to put up at least a temporary cavity-block annex, in a period of flux. In short, Ms Truss is stupid, incredibly stupid.  Before there are outraged cries of misogyny, the same is  true of the  entire British Cabinet and indeed the Tory party as a whole. This is quite separate from the fact that they are as a collective, deeply unpleasant human beings. Exposure of politicians to daylight in modern political landscapes is tightly controlled,  but today it requires more than a Bernard Ingham’s thuggery and physicality to protect a Prime Minister. Neither is the elaborate ‘Communications Suite’ in Downing Street, which seems to have more bugs than a bed in a Tory Landlord’s bedsit, sufficient. It is doubtful if even a reborn Charles Saatchi (80 next birthday) could do much with her, even though he is decidedly experienced at mishandling women. There will always be a herd  of hungry and ambitious brats willing to torque up the bullshit in both Downing Street and Tory Central Office and Murdoch will always be ready to supply secondments, his entire media empire and  elegant Georgian houses close to the Palace of Westminster.   Essentially on paper, the Tories are armed to the teeth and stand ready to repel Mogadon Man Starmer, and given that all Tories stand always ready to slaughter their own first borns in the pursuit and retention of power, you wouldn’t bet the house against them. Their first and greatest problem is the individual they have installed as their nominal leader. In truth, it is doubtful if she herself knows what she believes in, or actually thinks about anything. She will be overwhelmed from day one and directed by whatever party faction establishes itself as her kitchen cabinet. And then there is Boris, who sees himself as an incipient triumphant comeback kid. The only way to describe the Tory Government and British politics at this time is chaotic. Living next to these noisy neighbours will become even more unpleasant and uncomfortable. The shadow-boxing over the NI Protocol may turn very nasty indeed. We understood the faux-Churchillian bravura of Johnson and knew it was essentially gin-scented trapped wind. Truss is not merely dumb she is potentially more capable of vindictive madness than the Eton bully. In her posturing to placate the DUP, it is perfectly possible she will end the historic and indeed vital common travel area between our islands. Objectively, Truss may appear to us ridiculous, even comical; but she is not funny. No proper Conservative ever is.