Britain’s constitutional crisis has now lasted twelve years. Were we a weaker country, a collapse of stable governance on this scale would have triggered much debate over whether foreign intervention could fix our institutions, or whether we were simply beyond help.

Our political system is designed with one purpose: to produce overwhelming majority governments. It has done nothing of the sort for over a decade. We’ve lurched through two coalitions (one dependent on the craven liars of the Liberal Democrats and the other on Ulster Unionist terrorist sympathizers), six years and counting of slow-burn Brexit obsession, three party leaders removed in palace coups, and three elections in four years. Then we got a leader who presided over one of the world’s worst pandemic death tolls before managing the genuinely impressive achievement of reaching moral standards low enough to be impeached by the Conservative Party.

Elected by party members on Monday, Britain’s newest prime minister, Liz Truss, is simply the latest detritus thrown up by this crisis. As she takes office, inflation rages out of control while people’s wages lie stagnant; absurd price hikes in energy, food, and rent are pushing an already fragile economy off a cliff, and trust in politics is (rightly) at an all-time low. The morning her victory was announced, a flagship TV show was busy turning the energy-poverty crisis into a grim gameshow, offering viewers the chance to have their bills paid. Truss may be comically out of her depth — but so is all of Britain’s political and media class.