After a five-day silence, Liz Truss this morning gave interviews to local BBC journalists around the country. Guessing she was told it was a softer option than facing the ‘professionals’ on the Today programme…

They’ll only ask easy questions, nothing to worry about, it’ll be a doddle, you’ll ace it against that lot…

This turned out to be a miscalculation. The local broadcasters fired off uncomfortable questions. The prime minister had no answers, only robotic phrases. And the process was repeated again and again, more tough questions from a different presenter, more spluttered pauses for answers.

The economic catastrophe that occurred immediately after she and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, unleashed their crackpot tax-cutting budget, the one that freaked the financial markets so much the Bank of England had to step in to stop the potential collapse of pension funds and our economy – yes, that one ­– nothing to do with her.

All that tax-cutting generosity towards the already wealthy – will no-one remember the poor bankers? ­– had been misunderstood. The mini budget was going to plan, she was changing nothing, and besides most of this was President Putin’s fault.

Truss is so convinced of her own rightness that she cannot waver or allow a second thought as the world collapses around her, as the markets conclude Britain risks becoming a basket-case economy.

It’s all said to be about growth, of course. Her oft-avowed determination to “grow the economy” (a dead phrase if ever there was). Even though there is no evidence tax breaks for the wealthy  boost the economy. Unless you’re a City banker, then they boost your economy nicely.

Trickle-down economics had their day under Thatcher and Reagan. Didn’t work then, won’t work now. Nothing trickles, the rich grow richer, the poor feel the spray but not the benefit.

This is all part of a neo-liberal experiment in how to turn Britain into a small-state country with few rules or regulations, no proper care for the environment (too expensive and bothersome) or for the disadvantaged (they just need to sort themselves out).

Truss, along with Kwarteng, is in thrall to the Institute of Economic Affairs, and other cabals of unsaintly ideologues.

Such shadowy right-wing think-tanks are often opaquely funded (we’re looking at you, the TaxPayers’ Alliance), and yet laid the rails along which Truss now wobbles.

Those two are based at 55 Tufton Street, where you can also find the climate-change-denying Global Warming Policy Foundation. It was also once the home of Vote Leave, chief begetters of our post-Brexit demise.

The IEA has been at this disruptive game for a long time, having been founded in 1955 by Eton-educated Anthony Fisher to right what he saw as the socialist wrongs of the Labour government.

One of its key aims was to undo the post-war social democratic consensus (or progress, if you prefer), and be rid of new-fangled notions such as our National Health Service. All these years later, their dark-eyed puppet is prime minister, so we’d better watch out.

Truss and Kwarteng ignored all sensible advice against their mini budget, even calling it a “fiscal event” so it would avoid the scrutiny of the Office for Budget Responsibility, and avoidable chaos ensued.

But here’s a scary thought – perhaps the plan is to weaken society and, with a cruel shrug, push the NHS into the grasping hands of US insurance companies.

And at the heart of all this, we have an unelected prime minister. No one has been allowed to vote for any of this. Truss’s policies are different to those espoused by Boris Johnson, yet she has hijacked his majority without the rest of us having a say.

Look, I hated the last one, and the one before that, and the one before that. But the latest Tory prime minister to have been shuffled up promises to be the worst of the lot. All of us who disliked  Johnson should look at his successor and shudder.