"After Kwarteng's sacking, sorry seems to be the harshest word for the cowardly Truss"

Labour MP for Rhondda Chris Bryant says Liz Truss has lost the trust of the British people and her own party and is stumbling from disaster to the other< /p> The stench swirling around Downing Street comes from the Prime Minister and no one else (

Image: PA)

I had a lovely cousin called Isobel, who suffered from heartbreaking flatulence in old age. Each time she succumbed, she would glare at one of the dogs in a huff to have the blame laid on her.

Liz Truss did just that yesterday, firing Kwasi Kwarteng for implementing her policy and vision as she backtracked.

So the stench swirling around Downing Street is coming from her - and no one else.

Even the most ardent conservatives know that it is wrong to blame the staff when you have made a mistake. It's not honorable, it's not decent and it won't convince anyone.

The stench is disgusting. It's not just that people's mortgage rates are set to rise by around £500 a month next year, and that around £200 of that increase is directly attributable to Truss' mini-budget chaos.

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It's not just the fact that people cashing in their pension pots are finding they've lost almost a quarter of their value since Truss came to power.

It's not just that insecurity, instability and political turbulence are the greatest enemies of growth and prosperity. Or that businesses and local communities still have no idea what their energy bills or borrowing costs will look like next April – and face massive layoffs.

Much more important is the fact that Truss cannot be trusted. She lost the confidence of the British people and her own party. His word is not his bond. She didn't even have the decency to apologize or answer more than four questions from reporters at yesterday's press conference. She's a political coward, but she navigates her despicable arrogance and sense of entitlement.

Let me clarify. She and her chancellor failed to get her budget through. It's in tatters. It's a spaghetti alphabetti of loops and turns, a BMX routine of dangerous and dizzying U-turns. Every time a government has lost control of its finances in the past, it has had to resign and we have had a general election. But oh no, not in Russia.

As she told the Commons on Wednesday, 'The last thing we need is a general election'. She didn't mean the last thing the country needs. She meant it was the last thing the Tories needed because she knows voters would rightly hand them one of the loudest raspberries in history. It's putting party before country - the unforgivable sin.

I know some conservatives still think everything is salvageable. Some hope they can at least save their own skin. But they make fun of themselves. Truss' statement yesterday was more woody than the whole of the New Forest and the charred deposits of the coal seams of the South Wales Valleys combined. She practically ran away in the end.

Okay, so the Tories, now including Jeremy Hunt, are making a fool of themselves. We do not care? They will leave one day. It's when people take us for fools that I despair. Of course, they will oust Truss. It's just a question of who, when and how. But we all know where the bad smell comes from.