‘Watch out, Kwasi, you’re about to be sacked,’ a friend warned

Liz Truss was about to initiate the quickest U-turn on a major policy in British prime ministerial history.

By mid-afternoon that day , Truss had begun to think she would have to concede on corporation tax [which her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng ’s mini-budget had cut]. Messages had been pouring into Downing Street that she needed to go even further: a change of personnel might be needed too.

At 6pm she convened a meeting of her top party figures around the cabinet table.

He landed at Heathrow at 10.30am on Friday October 14 , “the first time I had a motorcade waiting for me on the tarmac, and the last,” he recalled.

As the car was setting off to whisk him to Downing Street , fellow passenger Celia McSwaine , another of his advisers, called one of Truss ’s aides: “What has he heard?” “There is speculation all over the media. He wants to know — is he on the road just to come in to be sacked? At that point Kwarteng himself grabbed the phone. “She's going to sack me, is n’t .

Liz Truss's power was slipping away from her by the minute .

She still banked on being safe from a challenge from her own MPs.

Conservative MPs, for decades deep into the 20th century the epitome of loyalty to their leader, could not resist grandstanding on submitting letters, calling cards for a hoped-for successor.