When I meet James O’Brien it’s just a few weeks before his new book, How They Broke Britain, comes out. It’s a damning account of how the country ended up in the current mess, and the cast of characters he holds most responsible – Rupert Murdoch, Jeremy Corbyn and Andrew Neil are among those given their own chapters. As is Liz Truss, whose lettuce-spanning, economy-wrecking premiership is held as the inevitable conclusion to having had our political and media ecosystems polluted with lies and corruption for years.
It’s a neat ending, but O’Brien worries he might have jumped the gun. It’s the Conservative party conference when we speak, and, given some of the frankly barmy news coming out of it – will Nigel Farage re-join the Conservatives? Could Liz Truss be Tory leader again? – he’s wondering if we’ve yet to reach the nadir of this bleak political period. Should he still be writing it?
