Where is Liz Truss?

The safest place for a minister to be in a crisis is at the despatch box of the House of Commons, one old hand used to say. His argument was that at the despatch box you at least had a modicum of control, you could respond to events in your own words. 

But Liz Truss has taken the opposite view, she is dodging Keir Starmer’s urgent question in the House of Commons. Instead, the woman she pipped to the members’ round of the Tory leadership contest, Penny Mordaunt, will take her place. One expects that Mordaunt, a strong Commons performer, might rather enjoy the chance to show Tory MPs how she goes up against Keir Starmer.

Truss’s absence will only serve to highlight how mute she has been. She has not spoken publicly since her eight-minute press conference on Friday and since then rather a lot has happened, including Jeremy Hunt’s cancellation of all but a handful of the measures in the mini-Budget.