Beware Sir Graham Brady - he of the thousand watt smile, holder of the letters of no confidence, bringer of doom to Prime Ministers. Really a man who should be galloping around Westminster on a pale horse.
He entered Number 10 just before midday. An hour and a half later, the Prime Minister came out and announced her resignation.
“I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected,” she said.
Well, thanks for nothing, Liz. At least you gave it a good crack, after all you were in post for…*checks notes*...44 days.
We’ve been told a Conservative leadership election will be completed within a week.
It almost makes you wonder why we sat through two months of tedious chatter and hyperbole from a woman who clearly wasn’t fit for the job. But aren’t you glad you know Liz Truss’ thoughts on the culture wars?
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Ever the optimist, Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt encouraged her colleagues to: “Keep calm and carry on.”
I’m afraid corny slogans and a jolly hockey sticks attitude won’t help your party now, Penny.
Here in Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham immediately called for a general election. “We can’t go on like this,” he tweeted.
It’s hard to argue with him. Who voted for this? How did it come to be that politics in this country has come to resemble some kind of reality show for the over-promoted, in which the electorate are just the audience for experiments and games, and not the people they're actually supposed to be working for?
Far beyond the machinations of government, the primary concern of thousands of people in Greater Manchester is how to heat their homes, put food on the table and clothe their children.
Just last week, dad Anthony Warburton broke down in tears on the streets of Oldham as he told our reporter he has ‘no money in the bank’ while out walking his baby boy.
“I have nothing in the cupboard, nothing in the fridge. All my money is just for him,” he said.
Meanwhile Joanne Brierley spends hours trapped upstairs in her flat in the same town - too frightened to charge the stairlift and mobility scooter on which she depends.
In Bolton, Angela Speak has spent nights by candlelight because she can’t afford the electricity.
Even in Hale Barns, supposedly one of the most affluent corners of not just Greater Manchester, but the country, people shiver in their homes. Like Julie Aston - who suffers with arthritis and looks after five kids and lives in the area's Mount estate, so stressed about money she’s had to visit her GP.
They are just four examples of desperate people already struggling with a cost of living crisis, compounded by the aftermath of the pandemic and war in Europe, yes, but caused largely by government mismanagement.
I can’t imagine that those at the sharp end of the crisis - visiting foodbanks, warm banks and surviving on kettle boxes - have the time or the inclination to worry about which knighted MP will be fiddling about with letters and delivering the bad news to a PM voted in by a few thousand people.
Yesterday we discovered that inflation is still north of 10%, the worst for 40 years, while food inflation is at 14%. In Wigan that means workers were, on average, £122 a month poorer in July of this year than last year. In Manchester they were £123 worse off.
All that means that while the Westminster psychodrama might be unedifying, the economic fate of millions rests not only on it coming to a swift conclusion, but on the decisions that come out of it.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has already warned decisions of 'eye-watering difficulty' will have to be made as the country battles to win back the confidence of lenders after the Truss experiment, indicating a new wave of austerity, when communities in Greater Manchester haven't seen services recover from the last.
What might a new leadership team's approach mean for social care, schools, transport and criminal justice - all the things that matter to people in our region?
The Energy Price Guarantee is now expected to last just six months, there's been a u-turn on the cut to the basic rate of income tax, and while Truss said she was committed to the triple-lock for pensions, we don't know if her successor is. Neither do we know if benefits - so vital to the disabled, the working poor, the unemployed, and carers - will rise in line with inflation.
Not long after Truss' resignation speech Sir Graham ventured outside to speak to reporters, confirming there will be two candidates for the leadership, unless only one comes forward.
Pressed on whose idea it was to truncate the process into one week the long-standing MP for Altrincham and Sale, who wields great power as the chairman of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers, said: “I think it’s a matter on which there is a pretty broad consensus” adding: “It certainly is not the circumstances I would wish to see.”
Clarity cannot come soon enough.
Political commentators have delighted in using the word ‘unprecedented’ over the last 24 hours. The atmosphere is febrile, they have told us.
It’s certainly felt pretty febrile here in the north as people struggle to make ends meet while reading reports of fisticuffs in the Commons.
It was said that some Tory MPs went to bed last night in tears. For too many people in Greater Manchester in recent times, the tears are nothing new.
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