Can you feel sorry for Liz Truss?

It is not easy to feel sorry for Liz Truss. She has a deeply unattractive streak of vanity – when in the Foreign Office, she seemed more interested in posing for the official photographers who trailed her round than she did in building relationships with the places she visited. She campaigned hard and sometimes dirty to obtain a job for which she was manifestly out of her depth.

Once in that job, she exercised power with peremptory arrogance. She rewarded people who had sucked up to her, cast out anyone who had spoken up for her rival, and allowed experienced civil servants to be hoofed ruthlessly out of their jobs. So confident was she that she knew best that she didn’t bother to seek the support of cabinet for her most radical proposals, and she rejected the advice of the OBR before it had even been given. She cannot claim to have been badly advised because she made sure that she was not advised at all.