Two-thirds of the apples and nine-tenths of the pears that we eat are imported, not to mention two thirds of the cheese. And that is a disgrace. From… - Liz Truss

Truss believes in the wisdom of the markets. It is the unaccountable power of quangos, civil servants and law courts she fundamentally mistrusts. So what caused the banks and the currency exchanges to turn against her? Are they communists, too?

As she says it, she sounds as if she believes it, which presumably she has to, or else she wouldn't be here but would instead be serving out her penance in a soup kitchen somewhere. As I listened to her banging on, her eyes oddly glassy as though looking for something just over the horizon, she strongly reminded me of someone but I couldn’t put my finger on who it was. Then it came to me. In her mix of utter conviction and utter obliviousness to how she might come across to anyone who doesn’t see the world the way she does, the politician she most resembles is Jeremy Corbyn.

I knew Truss at university. She was a library-bound anorak, with no lingering smell of depravity about her small, neat form. I never saw her drag a married man into a recess at a political meeting and ravish him on a pile of electoral reform leaflets. If she is debauched then I am the devil herself. But Truss had the courage and ambition to enter British politics. I did not.