Liz Truss is a warning to us all about the danger of overconfidence

The instant histories are already being written that seek to explain the collapse of her premiership after just 49 days, writes John Rentoul

How did it go so wrong, so fast for Liz Truss? (Getty)

How did it go so wrong, so fast for Liz Truss? This could already be an exam question for students of ultra-contemporary history. Next week, the first attempt to answer it, by Harry Cole and James Heale, will be published. They had been writing a biography of the prime minister aimed at the Christmas market, but they have had to update and re-title it, rushing it out as an e-book next Tuesday, with hard copies by the end of next month.

An extract was published in The Sun this morning, which sheds new light on the question. It underlines how politically close Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng were. They both came into the Commons in 2010, and Kwarteng told the authors: “I remember saying to her in our first year in parliament, you’re going to get to the top because you’re going to stick around longer than anyone else.”

From my own recollection, it would seem that the critical period was 2017-18, when Truss was chief secretary to the Treasury and Kwarteng was parliamentary private secretary to Philip Hammond, the chancellor. I get the impression that they formed a strong bond, presumably based on complaining to each other about Hammond, about his caution and unwillingness to challenge what they derided as the “Treasury orthodoxy” – a phrase that was to feature prominently in Truss’s leadership campaign.