The Debatable Land #30: Who governs Britain?

Not Liz Truss, that's who.

James Carville, the Cajun political strategist, once said: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But no I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

Well, as we have discovered in recent days, ain’t that the truth?

None of us have seen anything like this before. Never before has a new government set its own credibility ablaze in the same style with which Liz Truss has poured petrol onto whatever remained of her party’s reputation for fiscal soundness and financial security. Tear up all those Tory attacks on Labour, for they will not be needed for some time to come. There is no escaping this and while a change of prime minister might purchase some temporary space for the Conservative party it can now only delay a reckoning that must be as severe as it is overdue.

Still, the days of Boris Johnson - days which necessarily came to an end, you will recall, because he …