Liz Truss is Britain’s type on paper. The daughter of a university professor father and a mother who was a teacher and nurse, young Elizabeth grew up in a humble home of hard workers. She lived in various places, including along the road in Paisley where she went to primary school.

She also lived in Poland, and then in Canada, where she began to excel academically, setting her on a path of Oxford. She graduated, and worked for a while in the private sector before becoming an MP. So far, so good. A very British story, actually. Where did it go so wrong?

I have been in Ms Truss’s company a couple of times, once in a small group before she became an MP, and once in a larger group when she was a Cabinet Minister. It was during that first meeting - before which I had seen her credentials and been energised about meeting her - that I realised how many clever fools there are in life, and in politics.

I watched her rise through the political ranks with astonishment, bewildered that those who knew her well were unable to diagnose what I was able to diagnose in a very short meeting. The calamity of her mercifully short time in Downing Street was utterly unsurprising, at least to me.

Nonetheless, even I was surprised to see her flirtation with the ludicrous Steve Bannon on her trip to the US last week. As well as failing to flinch when Mr Bannon lauded Tommy Robinson, Ms Truss blamed her defenestration as Prime Minister on the ‘deep state’, the definition of which I can only presume she does not understand.

Tommy Robinson (Image: free)

Not all fools are clever, of........

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