Sarah Vine – the Daily Mail columnist and Michael Gove’s ex-wife – wrote this week that Liz Truss’s mistake had been to forget that you should keep your friends close and enemies closer. But the prime minister’s problem is that even if she tried to adopt this approach, she now has too many foes to hug them all near.
As Tory MPs take in the political landscape after four days of infighting at the party’s conference in Birmingham, once again a sense of despair has taken hold of the parliamentary party. “It was very chaotic and divisive,” says one MP of the party’s annual meet. “There weren’t as many of us there, but the ones that did show up were downbeat about the party’s prospects.”
