Liz Truss: A lame duck PM needs to end this shambles by calling General Election

Has anyone ever looked more out of their depth than our new Prime Minister?

I hesitated writing this column on Tuesday for Thursday’s edition of the Press. Anything could happen during those 48 hours.

She may well have summoned her chauffeur and told him to head to Buckingham Palace to inform the new King she’s chucking it before carrying on to the airport and boarding the first flight out of here.

Truss has the look of someone who has just stepped into the wrong movie.

Her attempts to be as bold as her idol, Margaret Thatcher, failed spectacularly when she tanked the economy with a scarily inept mini-budget that had the markets in turmoil.

She said sorry - of sorts - and threw the Chancellor under a bus in the political equivalent of the ventriloquist sacking the dummy for parroting her words.

His successor, Jeremy Hunt, has now torn up her plan, and is more or less the Prime Minister in all but name. Trussonomics is floating like a dead sheep in a canal.

A Prime Minister only elected on September 6 could be gone before they turn back the clocks. Heck, she could be gone before the next contestant is voted out on Strictly this weekend …

Truss knows how this ends.

It’s a matter of when, not if, she goes - and the ripples, if not tidal waves, that decision causes.

She is PM in name only. Power - real power - now belongs to Hunt. Hostages look more comfortable than Truss right now.

She would be as well pouring the teas at the next Cabinet meeting for all the influence she now wields.

How long can she sit beside him in the Commons nodding like Churchill - the dog, not the politician - as he outlines a plan that is completely opposite to the one she campaigned on during the never-ending vanity contest that passed for a Tory leader election?

Her decisions in that mini-budget caused real financial pain for many, many people, from bond markets to household budgets, Anyone in the middle of getting a mortgage saw bills soar so quickly and brutally they may well have had to tear up all their plans.

Her apology was pitiful.

“Sorry for the mistakes - we went too far, too fast” she said as if she’d just reversed over someone’s foot as they tried to cross the road.

Her lack of empathy is deeply concerning. Might as well add that to her complete lack of charisma or leadership.

It is astonishing that the Tories managed to jettison the ghastly and disgraceful Boris Johnson, and actually find someone even worse.

This is a party that has reached the end of the road. It simply has to call a General Election.

If that means they all end up out of jobs, we shall shed no tears. They were all complicit in Johnson’s squalid behaviour during lockdown. They deserve to be horsed.

It’s time to let the people pass judgement - and, in doing so, that may re-shape the landscape for ever.

Truss may be short lived but her ‘legacy’ will be long-lasting...