The inescapable boom of Kwasi Kwarteng

Not being a Sun reader, you may have missed this entertaining extract from Harry Cole and James Heale's Out of the Blue - a biography of Liz Truss that turned into an account of her spectacular implosion:

In early January, Johnson’s chief whip Mark Spencer was hosting Scottish secretary ­Alister Jack on a day’s shooting at an estate in Devon.

Between drives, the tweed-clad pair were in a Land Rover with others, when Jack’s phone rang.

As he was behind the wheel, Jack answered on the built-in hands-free.

On the other end was the inescapable boom of Kwasi Kwarteng, voicing fears the PM was on his knees.

“If it all goes wrong, what happens? Are you a Liz guy?”, Kwarteng asked Jack, with the eavesdropping chief whip flitting between silent laughter and seething incredulity.

“No, no, no I am not,” replied Jack.

“Oh,” said a disheartened Kwarteng, “so you are a Rishi guy?”

“No, let’s be clear Kwasi, I am a Boris guy,” hit back Jack. “And furthermore I have the Chief Whip in the car with me.”

Collapse of stout party. Liz Truss phoned not long afterwards to assure tall concerned that Kwarteng had got carried away and was not canvassing Cabinet support on her orders. Which only strengthened their conclusion that he was.

After this you would have expected Truss to have concluded that Kwarteng was not a man to entrust with a job requiring subtlety or sound judgement - such as running a whelk stall, for instance.

Not a bit of it. She made him her chancellor, with results we shall still be paying for years from now.