Truss’s ‘decisive action’ just confirmed what we already knew – that she hasn’t got a clue what she’s doing

To sack the chancellor is to confirm, not deny, that you have indeed got everything hopelessly wrong

Look, if you can’t reassure the markets, you might as well entertain them. If you don’t know what you’re doing, then at least do it in style – and that’s what Liz Truss has done, yet again.

For a long time now, economists have searched for answers to Britain’s productivity problem. Maybe the answer is now clear. How can anyone be expected to get any work done when they’ve been glued to the 24-hour news channels and frantically refreshing their phones as the neverending s***show just rolls on and endlessly on for as long as anyone can remember?

It’s a good six years since the first “UK – season finale” jokes, so where we are now, who can possibly say? Maybe it’s time to stop worrying and just let it wash over you like rain. The harder you clench your fist, the faster the sand will run away.

But there’s no doubting the scriptwriting has become tighter. It’s clear now that the latest episode began in earnest on Thursday afternoon in Washington DC, when Kwasi Kwarteng was asked if he would still be in his job in a month and he breezily replied, “Oh 100 per cent. I’m not going anywhere.” He left that interview, cancelled various meetings, was evacuated home on the last flight out and had been sacked before the wheels touched the ground.

Why was he sacked? Well, who can know? The prime minister and the now ex-chancellor have had the customary exchange of letters, both letters have been published and neither shed any light whatsoever on the subject. They do not even mention it.

A few hours after being yanked out of an IMF meeting in DC, then booted out of his job, Kwarteng had the following to say to the person who had sacked him: “Your vision of optimism, growth and change was right.” And she said the following back: “We share the same vision for our country and the same firm conviction to go for growth.”

We were absolutely right. We did a great job. Nothing’s gone wrong but you’ve got to resign.

Everyone knows that none of it makes sense. They’ve stopped expecting it to. But that’s not to say that they were prepared for what came next. It’s hard to say whether Liz Truss’s seven-minute long press conference was the worst one that’s ever happened in Downing Street’s brand-new press conference room. There was, after all, the one where Allegra Stratton pissed herself laughing at the idea that hundreds of Downing Street staff hadn’t all been knowingly breaking the law. That one, eventually, cost her job – and the prime minister’s – but then, eventually, so will this one.

You only really give a press conference when you want to reassure the public that things are fine. That’s why, when a deadly pandemic turned up, the government gave one every day (with varying levels of success).

But if you’re going to give a press conference then walk out smirking after giving the same non-answer to four questions, it is possible it will have the opposite effect. Why was she sacking her chancellor when everything he had done had been done “in lockstep” with her? Ah, she said, because “I have taken decisive action”.

The trouble is, the decisive action just confirmed what everyone already knew. That she hasn’t got a clue what she’s doing. To sack the chancellor is to confirm, not deny, that you have indeed got everything hopelessly wrong. That everyone who thinks you’re completely mad is absolutely right – which they are.

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And what really doesn’t help is that, while she spoke, the government borrowing rates rose and rose and rose. They’d fallen overnight when the markets concluded she was going to U-turn on some of her more mad policies. But as their suspicions were confirmed, they went back up again, finishing higher than they had been before.

It makes some sort of sense. They’d been quiet in the morning, presumably because for markets to move, someone has to buy or sell something, and so incredible was the unrolling chaos that even the computer algorithms that do most trading these days had downed tools to watch it all on Sky News. When the chaos was over, they delivered their verdict.

They’d seen what everyone else had seen. A prime minister seeking to reassure them by publicly confirming her own total cluelessness. They were not reassured. Nor will they ever be. It’s only a matter of time now. Quite possibly days.