Columnist and dominatrix Melissa Todd, from Broadstairs, went to university with the Prime Minister.

Here, she reflects on how their lives took very different paths...

Liz Truss and I are the same age, which feels weird enough, but this means we also studied for the same degree at the same university through the same part of the mid-90s - PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) at Oxford.

We were at different colleges - I Balliol, she Merton - but would have attended the same lectures.

I don’t remember her. We wouldn’t have connected socially, as she was then a committed Liberal Democrat, while I was a Socialist Worker. We’ve both shifted a little to the right over the years.

There were about 500 of us in the lecture hall, and no shortage of posh girls to make her feel special. Ms Truss makes much of her Leeds comprehensive beginnings, but in truth, Roundhay school is consistently rated outstanding, the top establishment in the poshest part of town, where middle class parents have for decades lied and sweated to secure a place, even despite Conservative slashing per pupil funding by 8%.

Truss was educated under Thatcher, of course, as was I, and certainly her old school improved under Labour, as did most schools. Still, probably that wasn’t the point she hoped to make.

Anyway, two-thirds of her cabinet were privately educated, the poshest line-up since John Major’s day, so clearly she has little confidence in her comprehensive compadres.

Yet we’ve grown to have a good deal more in common than our dear old Alma Mater. I’m an amoral opportunist who’ll do anything for money, attention and power too, although even I would draw the line at destroying the entire country’s economy and currency, smashing apart the pensions and housing market, just to enrich and enchant my chums.

I found I had a talent for stripping, porn and domination, and abandoned my plans to be respectable, pursuing instead easy money; she found there wasn’t enough opportunity to become an MP in a party as electorally unsuccessful as the Liberal Democrats, and promptly deserted that sinking ship; when she found her best hope of power was to go hard right and pro-Brexit, further right she jogged.

I too always pretend to agree with the people who pay me; it’s good business sense. I wouldn’t dream, for example, of telling the bankers who pay me that they should be taxed more heavily, and apparently nor will she. But then, I’m not a public servant, with the futures of millions unravelling between my grasping, grubby little fingers.

I wonder if she might remember me? I left Oxford to enter the sex trade; the BBC made a documentary about my decision, so I was the talk of the town for about a fortnight.

I made the right decision. Having come from an Essex comprehensive, I was never going to fit into Oxford life the way I did a lap-dancing bar.

The working classes don’t make it into Oxford for good reason: they’d absolutely hate it. Trying to squeeze a kid from Scumbag College into Oxbridge is akin to entering a pig for a beauty contest; whether it’s meant as a kindness or a joke, it won’t end well for the pig.

I still love politics, and quite fancied being Prime Minister myself, but being working class my natural place is on the sidelines, sniping and judging politicians, which is why I’ve taken up a journalism side hustle alongside my sex work.

"I’m an amoral opportunist who’ll do anything for money, attention and power too, although even I would draw the line at destroying the entire country’s economy..."

The question of who possesses power and deserves power comprises the essence of my current career as a dominatrix, too, but with fewer meetings and better outfits.

I wonder too if Liz Truss wishes she’d followed my path and abandoned her political career some weeks back.

In under a fortnight we saw sterling in free fall, the IMF condemning her plans, and the Bank of England forced to intervene before pensions and house prices plummeted into non-existence. That’s a lecture I must have skipped.

Might she be kinky too? The O necklace she wears has led several commentators to suggest she might be a collared submissive. It’s a readily recognised symbol in BDSM communities, first seen in Pauline Reage’s The Story of O, now worn by submissives to announce they are owned by dominants.

She’s continued to wear the necklace long after the whispers went viral, and indeed, seems to possess a few in similar styles.

I’d love to imagine our Prime Minister was an out and proud, sex positive member of the kink community. But that would take courage, integrity, creativity, honesty.

Also, surely she’d be happier and more fulfilled, less likely to chase joy by destroying her citizens’ dreams.

No: likely that O suggests her plans for sterling and the UK’s GDP, and she and I have only our age in common.