I’m not old enough to remember the Suez Crisis of 1956 but my understanding is that Britain thought it was such a mighty world power that, along with Israel and France, it could successfully invade Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal .

It was an unmitigated disaster. US president Dwight D Eisenhower had strongly warned Britain not to invade and had threatened serious damage to the British financial system by selling the US government's pound sterling bonds.

The magnitude of the political misjudgement cannot be underestimated with historians concluding the crisis ‘signified the end of Great Britain's role as one of the world's major powers’.

Such was the scale of the humiliation, prime minister Anthony Eden had no option other than to resign.

Basically, we were a global laughing stock.

There have been other crises since 1956 including the 1973 oil crisis, the 1976 Sterling crisis, Black Wednesday (otherwise known as the 1992 Sterling crisis) and let’s not forget the global banking crisis of 2008.

All of these had significant political and economic ramifications but not one of them ever really matched the utter humiliation of the Suez Crisis.

Until now.

Basically the rest of the world is laughing at us, and with good reason following an ideological, reckless and unsustainable budget foisted on the country by prime minister Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.

Remember, there was no legitimate basis for the plan to cut taxes for the richest while the rest of us were in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

It didn’t figure in the 2019 Tory manifesto which instead promised ‘levelling up’ and not ‘trickle down’.

But in a way, it was hardly a surprise. It had become increasingly clear that Truss and Kwarteng were drawing their policies from opaquely funded so-called think tanks which espouse policies such as low regulation, reduced state intervention, low tax and low public spending. In essence, the message from these think tanks ‘let the markets decide’.

So among other things, we have ‘let the market decide to carry out fracking’, ‘let the market decide to carry on drilling for oil in the North Sea’, ‘the NHS is a drain on resources so let the market decide who can afford to be treated’.

The writing was on the wall when Truss announced who some of her special advisers were.

Her senior special adviser, Ruth Porter, was communications director at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), described by Guardian columnist George Monbiot as a libertarian lobby group.

Monbiot adds that when she worked at the IEA, Porter called for reducing housing benefit and child benefit, charging patients to use the NHS, cutting overseas aid and scrapping green funds.

Truss’s chief economic adviser is Matthew Sinclair, formerly chief executive of a similar lobbying group, the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

There are other key members of her team associated with other so-called think tanks.

There is little doubt that the now defunct mini-budget was the equivalent of a neoliberal, free-market fever dream. The think tanks had got what the always wanted, a prime minister and Chancellor who thought like them.

And we are all paying the price. The mini-budget pushed up interest rates and millions will see their mortgages rise as a result. The damage caused also means we will all be suffering austerity policies again.

But we can all take comfort from the fact that Warrington South MP Andy Carter seemed pleased with the mini-budget and the involvement of think tanks when he retweeted a post by the IEA’s Mark Littlewood, saying: “It’s refreshing to hear a Chancellor talk passionately about the importance of economic growth and supply-side reforms rather than rattling off a string of state spending pledges and higher taxes.”

That tweet hasn’t aged well.

I wonder if Mr Carter still stands by his support for it.