Let there be peace osketch5/26/2023 Lino Liz might still have been cooped up in her Downing Street gilded cage, had not Thérèse Coffey – Dr Feelgood – rushed down to the voting lobbies on Wednesday night with a bag stuffed full of mood-altering drugs. “Liz has had a very productive day, sleeping under her desk.” “Liz has been allowed out to sack Suella Braverman.” Truss had tried to send messages by blinking desperately in morse code, but her pleas for help had gone unnoticed. From then on she had in effect been a hostage inside No 10, with various captors having to give regular updates to an incurious nation about her wellbeing. Indeed, she had really been leader in name only since Colonel Jeremy Hunt had assumed control of the country last week. It had been obvious to the rest of us for weeks that she was hopelessly out of her depth and that the Tory party and the country was falling apart around her. So what changed? Mostly, she allowed reality to finally intrude. At prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Librium Liz had insisted she was a “fighter not a quitter”. The authentic voice of those guaranteed to get most things wrong. No further series of time-slip adventures in which she could enter parallel universes where she was a successful prime minister would be called for. The pretence of trying to appear competent could be abandoned. The shame and humiliation that had become the country’s own shame and humiliation. Yet by the time she had finished she looked almost relieved. Her statement lasted barely a couple of minutes. Though she would hang on for another week while the Tory party hastily scrabbled around for a new leader. The record for shortest-serving prime minister was hers. But her achievements had been so remarkable that it was best she went out on a high. Amnesia prevented her from mentioning her U-turns. And the reduction in national insurance contributions that Labour had first proposed. An energy package that literally any other prime minister would have introduced. She had delivered some fantastic achievements for the country.
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