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

Our system has worked for over 100 years. But what to do when ministers fetishise ideology over objectivity and honesty?

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.

The author works for the UK civil service