In an attempt to avoid looking like Downing Street had descended into full-scale panic, eight BBC local radio interviews were set up. “They were, objectively, a disaster,” said one of her senior team. Over the course of an hour, interviewers from the radio stations in Leeds (where she grew up), Norfolk (she is the MP for South West Norfolk), Kent, Lancashire, Nottingham, Tees Valley, Bristol and Stoke-on-Trent unleashed the pent-up anger of millions of nervous Britons. The girls will be the first teens living at Downing Street since Blair's term in office. He had three teenage children in situ during his 10-year stay. Frances worked on the digital team at the campaign headquarters after gaining a computing qualification at school, Truss told The Daily Telegraph. She has already said she would vote to scrap the Partygate investigation and has refused to commit to reappointing an ethics adviser, saying she “always acted with integrity”.

For Truss’s newly assembled team of political aides, it was a chance to get to know each other. The group included special advisers who had worked with Truss at the Foreign Office, and a handful from the Boris Johnson and Theresa May eras. Among others were public affairs executives and lobbyists. Trust in British democracy and the state has plummeted to new depths under Boris Johnson with his rejection of the normal conventions of government. The incident took place during the summer leadership race but did not publicly emerge until after she had left No 10, meaning many remained in the dark about how to get hold of her.

Material: 100% organic ringspun combed cotton with the Trainspotting style post with Liz Truss and Twatspotting. During her Tory leadership campaign Truss said the girls, who reportedly attend state schools, were actively involved behind the scenes. Robert Halfon went one step further and directly blamed Truss for trashing the Conservative party brand. The unhappiness of the parliamentary party was becoming increasingly stark, emboldening MPs to think the unthinkable: that they might be about to defenestrate a second prime minister in just over a month. As she was driven towards No 10 on the last leg of her round trip, the car made several detours to wait for a break in the rain in which Truss could make a speech, while a bin bag was temporarily used to protect the waiting, sodden podium.

Towards the end of the debate, communications broke down. On the floor of the Commons, with less than 10 minutes until the division bells started ringing, the energy minister, Graham Stuart, announced that the confidence vote had been called off. Mayhem broke out. Coffey was accused of manhandling a Tory MP to force them to vote with the government, while Morton and her deputy, Craig Whittaker, felt so undermined that they tried to resign on the spot. It was like she’d stripped off all the wallpaper, then the paint and floorboards too. There was basically zero institutional memory left,” one Truss-era cabinet minister said. The Times described the girls' arrival as "a concept straight out of a sitcom: a teenager, at a time of peak sass, disregard and disrespect for one's parents, growing up in Downing Street".In August, Truss told the Daily Express that her daughters were "very excited" and Liberty "keeps asking would she be able to have sleepovers if I get into No 10". Low profile Jeremy Hunt was asked to take the job. Normally affable, on this occasion he was solemn – he requested that no pictures of him smiling be released by in-house government photographers. Hunt was now running the show, and Truss’s supporters felt the entire policy platform on which she had entered No 10 was about to be ripped to shreds. His hubristic handling of a series of self-inflicted scandals over the last year – Owen Paterson, Partygate and Chris Pincher – left his integrity fatally wounded and public trust even more diminished. Since then the prime ministers' offspring in residence have only been babies or pre-teens and strenuously shielded from media intrusion.