Ex-chancellor and Truss were close political allies and friends before he was sacked over a crisis stoked by the mini-budget

Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor of the exchequer for 43 of Liz Truss’s 49 days as British prime minister, has said Truss “essentially” sacked him “on Twitter”, a dismissal he called “kind of Trumpian” in its swiftness and brutality as Britain fell into crisis.

Kwarteng said: “One of the things that I feel bad about, among other things, was that she capitulated very quickly [to pressure to sack him]. So I came back and I was sacked, essentially on Twitter. So, kind of Trumpian.”

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Scotland’s first minister and SNP leader’s demise shows Westminster does not have the monopoly of chaos and ineptitude

It must be contagious. Just when you thought Westminster might have the monopoly on incompetence and chaos, along comes Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, saying: “Hold my Diet Coke.” Anything the Tories can do south of the border, the Scottish National party can manage north of it. We are in a new political era where the life span of politicians is measured in units of Liz Truss. Or lettuces. So Yousaf reaching seven and half Trusses – or approximately 54 lettuces. Which, all things considered, is fairly respectable. If a lot less than he had hoped.

Last Thursday, Yousaf had consciously uncoupled from the Scottish Green party . “You’re dumped,” he had announced, looking rather pleased with himself. It had been meant to be a power play. To ditch the Greens before they ditched him. A show of strength that the SNP could survive as a minority government without their coalition partner.

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Former PM’s first-week sales compare with 21,000 for David Cameron’s memoir and 92,000 for Tony Blair book

Liz Truss’s book about her 49-day stint as prime minister sold 2,228 copies in the UK during its first week on sale, after a wall-to-wall promotional media blitz.

Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room, combines an account of Truss’s time in office with a call to arms for the political right.

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‘Coastal elites’ feel the pinch of fast-food price hikes too. Plus: Liz Truss bars Guardian journalists from book launch. Lol

Donald Trump’s appearance in criminal court on Monday has raised many questions, constitutional and otherwise, but on the evidence of the first day I find myself most curious about the former president’s McDonald’s order. During jury selection last week, the Daily Mail reported on a $700 (£560) McDonald’s order put in by Trump staffers that included 27 orders of fries, 27 quarter pounders, a bunch of nuggets and no drinks. A McDonald’s employee complained anonymously that they didn’t leave a tip – in line with everyone who eats at McDonald’s – but still.

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Our former PM has a dire warning and a book to sell, but it isn’t really cutting through. A bit more Brit-style bumbling might help

‘I know the name,” texts a friend when I ask if she knows who Liz Truss is, but like most Americans can’t quite put her finger on why. “Like 8%,” guesses another when I ask her to put a number on how many of her countrymen she imagines know of Truss. The standard response, in my extremely unscientific poll of Americans as to whether or not they know of Truss, however, was: “No, should I?” – the answer to which, of course, depends entirely on whether you want to understand why the Tory party is polling around 20% or whether you happen to be Liz Truss.

Truss, the only one of us to suffer that particular misfortune, was in Washington DC this week trying, like so many minor British celebrities before her, to catch the eye of the Americans. At the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing thinktank that hosted the launch of Truss’s book Ten Years to Save the West , she came bearing a “warning”. Not an ideal ice-breaker, perhaps, but one clearly tailored to an audience receptive to the frisson of the term “forces of the global left”.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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Zoe Williams explores the greatest mystery of modern politics: Liz Truss’ self belief (1m15s), and Charlotte Edwardes delves into the extraordinary inside story of the biggest art fraud in American history (5m53s)

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A party resigned to oblivion made for a sulky session that did Rishi Sunak and the Commons no favours

There’s something to be said for a prolonged death. It means you can get your grieving in when the patient is still alive. All the more important when that patient is you. The Tories have known the game is up for some time now. They can read the polls as well as the rest of us. They are facing electoral wipeout. It’s not totally out the question that they might even be the third largest party after the next election.

None of this comes easy for Tories, born to believe that they are the party of government. So there has been plenty of tears as they process their grief. First the denial. This can’t be happening, they told themselves. These things don’t happen to people like them. It is against the natural order. So they dictated their own reality. One of their choosing. The methodology of the polls was wrong. Of course it was.

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The former PM’s account of her time in office is unstoppably self-serving, petulant, and politically jejune

“They didn’t seem to understand,” writes Liz Truss on page 250 of this unstoppably self-serving reworking of Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right, “that the UK was heading towards an economic cliff and that I was seeking to conduct a handbrake turn to avoid driving off the edge.” The scene is Birmingham, 30 September 2022, just before the self-described Brian Clough of prime ministers gave her keynote address to what turned out to be a divertingly catastrophic Conservative party conference.

The then prime minister is livid about how a cabal of Cinos (pronounced “Chinos” – Conservatives in name only) and other blob-adjacent political invertebrates were trying to nobble the week-old mini-budget she devised with her chancellor of the exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng. By means of this reform, a new globally competitive post-Brexit Britain would emerge. This “unchained Britannia” would be unconstrained by planning regulations, free to frack as never before and able to explore the North Sea for oil despite the ululations of virtue-signalling eco-zealots and the rest of the anti-growth wokerati. This would be a Britain where the super-rich were less hamstrung by corporation or inheritance taxes, and in which the 45p income tax rate (what she calls here the “anti-success tax”) would be little more than a bad memory.

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