TOM EATON | Despite Truss’s short, swift debacle, the UK is nowhere near as politically bankrupt as South Africa

I don’t blame South Africans for staring in wonder and delight at the spectacle of Liz Truss resigning after 44 days in office: it’s so rare for us to see accountability, we’ll take it in any form we can, even if it’s just a B-grade nobody being thrown under that bus Boris Johnson used to lie about, the NHS and Brexit.

Before you settle in for a vicious takedown of poor Liz, however, let me tell you that you won’t find it here.

Yes, she achieved almost nothing apart from crashing the currency, strengthening the opposition and confirming that her party is unfit to govern. But the ANC has done exactly the same, and it took them almost 30 years to do it whereas Truss did it in just over a month. On that count alone she is clearly a more efficient and determined politician than anyone at Luthuli House.

I also think the newspaper stunt comparing Truss’s final days in office to the shelf life of a lettuce was a little unfair, and possibly even a case of punching down: the lettuce was always going to be a more charismatic and principled leader than Truss, and using a fresh one, straight out of the fridge, was an obviously unfair advantage given that the Tories have been rotten for years.

Finally, and in all seriousness, I have to say that, for all Truss’s obvious failings and the complete political bankruptcy of the Conservatives, as a South African it does give me a bit of a thrill — and just a tiny touch of admiration — to see a useless leader hauled away and dumped with such haste.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was less charitable, telling the press that “the debacle of Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership is a symptom of a broken economic system and a trashed democracy”.

There was talk that Boris Johnson might be in the running to replace Truss, essentially that scene in the movie where the teens have escaped from the sawmill and run up the road to a cabin, only to discover that it’s where the chainsaw guy lives.

Mr Corbyn knows more about economic and politics than I do, but with all due respect to his experience, I think most South Africans know a little bit more about broken economic systems and trashed democracies than he does, and I’m afraid the UK still has quite a way to go before it can be considered a contender in either field.

Granted, the UK still doesn’t have a written constitution, and yes, the UK’s private sector has made no effort to disguise its eagerness to install a corporate shill like Truss. But in other ways it’s still hopelessly outclassed by South Africa.

For starters, it still needs to introduce cadre deployment, replacing its professional bureaucracy with a vast slab of immovable incompetence utterly loyal and in thrall to the ruling party, thereby ensuring economic growth happens despite, not because of, the state.

And the UK is clearly still a rank amateur when it comes to protecting Number 1. Since retaking power in 2010, the Tories have allowed four prime ministers to blow themselves up, and are about to install a fifth, whom they will almost certainly destroy too.

The ANC, by contrast, has inaugurated then resolutely defended just two presidents in that time, no matter how useless or rotten they were, or how much damage they did to the country.

On Thursday afternoon there was talk that Boris Johnson might be in the running to replace Truss, essentially that scene in the movie where the teens have escaped from the sawmill and run up the road to a cabin, only to discover that it’s where the chainsaw guy lives.

If this happens, the Tories will have taken a large stride towards the ANC-fication of British politics, emulating our lot’s penchant for re-employing disgraced and dangerous buffoons.

But for all the understandable Schadenfreude felt by many South Africans, and all our jokes about the UK being a failed state, and all our bursts of condescension and finger-wagging, one uncomfortable truth remains: we know that the Tories are going to be voted out in the next general election, but we can’t say the same about the ANC.