The genius of Hilary Mantel

Yes, but why did the IMF put out its Tuesday night statement? Even if all its criticisms of the government’s new economic policy were correct, why the rush? The IMF’s action is insulting to a G7 country and premature because its thoughts were inevitably composed without full knowledge. It is best seen as part of a pattern, like the early attempts to reverse Brexit, or the US government’s related interventions over the Northern Ireland Protocol. The people who have been running the developed world badly for more than two decades resent those who now challenge them. They pick their moments. The coup de grâce to Boris Johnson earlier this year was delivered by Lord Macdonald, the former head of the Foreign Office. I would not be surprised to learn that friends of Sir Tom Scholar, the head of the Treasury recently and abruptly pushed out by the Truss government, have been expressing their dismay to their friends in the IMF’s headquarters in Washington.