There are some things we just can’t beat – as Liz Truss found out

Between bouts of Covid delirium, Will Gore reflects on the battles that can’t be won

The prime minister underestimated an unlikely rival last week (Getty)

Sometimes reality bites hard. On Thursday afternoon I was tapping away at my laptop when I heard a commotion at the front of my house. Rubbernecking from the landing window, I saw that a bus had parked on the street and that another bus was in the process of driving around it, ostensibly on the wrong side of the road. At the same moment, a car travelling on the correct side of the road decided to come alongside the stationary bus too. There followed a standoff.

The bus driver gestured for the car to move back; the car driver waved frantically at the bus to do the same, getting out from his seat and onto the road to make his case ever more clearly. The gesticulations soon became angry, expletive-ridden shouts. The man driving the car, foul-mouthed as he was, had a technical point. He was in the correct lane, and in principle had the right of way. What’s more, as he was keen to point out, the bus hadn’t f***ing indicated.