It could all have been so different. I genuinely believed Theresa May when she stood on the steps of No 10 in July last year and said we would run a country for everyone and stand to fight injustice. I hung that speech on the wall of my Downing Street office and felt that, together, we were the crusaders against the stigma of mental ill health, the saviours of the Union and the champions of the working class.

But there was no together. Her closest advisers put paid to that.

Nick Timothy, the prime minister’s joint chief of staff, used to love reminding people what a hierarchy was and how it worked. If No 10 was run like a business, he would do well to