Liz Truss has kindly offered to 'save the west'. But who will save her from her delusions? | Gaby Hinsliff

(Theresa May, she writes, wanted to sack her but didn’t feel strong enough; Boris Johnson’s allies have long suspected he promoted her to crowd the pitch for others he considered more of a serious threat.)

In comparison with Labour politicians of the time, she was therefore playing politics mostly on the easy setting: one where the biggest newspapers bend over backwards to be kind, the City broadly shares your view of wealth creation, and a lack of serious challenge from the opposition makes it possible to believe that the facts of life will remain Conservative, regardless of what Conservatism itself actually morphs into.

Why not, when it was clearly now possible to pitch your tent well beyond whatever expert consensus considered reasonable and be lionised instead of punished – not only by your parliamentary colleagues, but also by the rightwing press and a good chunk of the voting public?

It’s a blatant rewriting of history, given she started out with plenty of cheerleaders in rightwing thinktanks who had helped to develop her reckless tax-cutting agenda and were rarely off the TV trying to promote it, while sympathetic newspapers initially tied themselves in knots to support her.

A healthy dose of scrutiny and scepticism would, in retrospect, have better served not just the country’s interests but their own in the long term, given how much of the party’s reputation she took with her when she charged headlong over the cliff.

Having to battle a largely hostile media, a suspicious City or wary swing voters to get a hearing for your ideas is undoubtedly exhausting, as any Labour politician knows.