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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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The civil servant

Spare a thought for your civil servants, trying to cope with Truss’s malignant cult

Liz Truss at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, on 5 October 2022.
Liz Truss at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, on 5 October 2022. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

If you’re finding the past couple of weeks bewildering, can you imagine what it’s like having – in the words of the celebrated civil service Twitter hero of 2020 – to actually work with these truth-twisters?

Pity, in particular, the tormented ring-wraiths of His Majesty’s Treasury. They will continue to be shackled to their gilded laptops until they come up with a narrative that a rattled prime minister and her brutalised chancellor can use to resolve their trilemma. In other words, to dream up an explanation of their plans that can somehow placate the ravening hyenas of the parliamentary Conservative party, the billionaire non-dom owners of the Daily Mail and the gatekeepers of the global financial markets.

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