Liz Truss has a big idea for the Budget! (Remember how well that went last time?)

She famously ‘prepared the ground’ for her notorious mini-Budget by sacking the top man at the Treasury and threatening to cancel the Bank of England, writes Tom Peck. But the valiant former PM is back and this time – don’t laugh – she’s serious…

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Liz Truss, by her own admission, did not do enough to “prepare the ground” for her “mini-Budget”, the one which led to the Bank of England having to intervene to protect people’s pensions from annihilation, and her being kicked out of Downing Street after 49 days, a fifth of which were taken up by a period of national mourning.

She has now announced plans to publish her own “alternative” Budget, in advance of Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement next month, and before we get on to the main, sociopathically delusional narcissism of it all, we might briefly ask whether or not she has learned her lesson on the ground preparation front.

Last time, she “prepared the ground” for her mini-Budget by sacking the most senior civil servant at the Treasury, making veiled threats about cancelling the independence of the Bank of England, and then refusing to let the Office for Budget Responsibility look at what she was planning to do, which for some reason led people to think that if you’re not letting the “responsibility” people see what you’re up to, then maybe you’re up to something irresponsible, which very much turned out to be the case.