It’s not just about the economy

The economic and social impacts of Liz Truss’s bid for ‘worst PM ever’ rightly take our attention.

But there’s an important lesson too about how our politics works, or rather doesn’t work.

Checks and balances, independent sources of power and authority, processes and timetables can all be frustrating if you think you know what needs doing and just want to get on with it.

But they have a valuable purpose.

They are the protection against the whizzy idea you’ve had and only thrashed out with close colleagues being not brilliant, but full of flaws, or even worse, a disaster.

Having to get others involved makes flawed plans better and sinks bad plans. That’s good and the “mini”-Budget showed all too starkly the problems when just two people can decided what’s going to happen to the country, push aside traditional checks like the OBR costings and plough on full speed into disaster.

So there’s an economic mess to sort, but the underlying problems also need political and constitutional reform too.

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