The race for the UK Prime Minister is heating up, and Rishi Sunak, Indian-origin former chancellor of the exchequer, has once again emerged as the favourite of a section of ruling Conservative Party MPs. Sunak has got a nomination from 100 MPs, a threshold set by the party to stand in the election for the premiership. The new prime minister is to be elected by October 28, a deadline Liz Truss announced as she resigned as UK PM on October 20.
Ever since former PM Boris Johnson was forced to resign on July 7, Sunak was the clear frontrunner for the top post and had got the highest number of party MPs backing him. However, Liz Truss, who trailed in all rounds of voting among the party MPs, defeated Sunak in the final election. But Sunak is back again in the race to become the next UK PM. So far, it looks like Sunak will face his former boss Boris Johnson, who is also trying to make a comeback at 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the UK Prime Minister. Sunak served as the finance minister from February 2020 to July 2022 under former PM Johnson.
Today, Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat backed Sunak for the top post saying the UK needs economic stability and that his competence and experience are needed in these challenging times. He said across the country, families are worried about heating their homes this winter, and about whether the economic situation will worsen.
“We need economic stability, and to put the country before the party of personal gain. That is what the public rightly expects. That is our duty. That is why I will support Rishi Sunak, whose competence and experience are needed in these challenging times,” he said, adding that as servants of the people, we must put politics aside. “This is no time for political games, for settling scores, or for looking backward”.
One reason why British MPs are backing Sunak is that they believe he can pull the country out of the crises it is in due to some of the economic decisions by Truss and her former finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng. In the run-up to the election, Truss had laid down the steps – like tax cuts and unfunded borrowing to revive the economy – she would take once elected to power. But Sunak said this would be disastrous, especially at a time when the world is facing serious inflation issues. Sunak has emerged as the clear choice as he had warned of the consequences of the decisions that Truss ended up taking as PM.
Britain will have a new prime minister within a week, outgoing leader Liz Truss said in her resignation speech outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday.
The fast-track process is in stark contrast to the contest that catapulted Truss into the hot seat – that lasted six weeks at the height of the summer.
This time, with the Conservatives at rock-bottom in the opinion polls and the markets jittery after a weeks of drama over Truss’ failed economic policy agenda, the party wants a new leader in place as soon as possible and with as little drama as possible.
Graham Brady, the Conservative official responsible for the process, announced the candidates to replace Truss will need get least 100 nominations from the party’s MPs by 2pm local time Monday.
If only one candidate meets that threshold, they will automatically become leader. Otherwise, an online ballot of party members will close on Friday October 28.
The winner of the contest will be the fifth Conservative prime minister in just over six years – and the third within this parliamentary term. But who might the next leader be? Here are some of the main runners and riders:
Though he has yet to formally declare his candidacy, Sunak has already reached the 100-nomination threshold, Britain’s PA Media news agency reported on Friday.
The former Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) has proved to be something of a prophet of the government’s demise, as many of the predictions he made during this summer’s leadership about Truss’s economic plan came to pass.
Sunak warned that Truss’s unfunded tax cuts would lead to a run on sterling, a panic in the bond market and concern from the International Monetary Fund. Perhaps even he would have been surprised by the pace with which he was proved right.
Sunak has experience of economic crisis-fighting, having guided the UK through the Covid-19 pandemic.
He also secured the most votes from MPs in the last leadership election – comfortably clearing the new threshold with 137 endorsements. Although Truss eventually won the decisive members’ vote, Sunak only lost narrowly – with 43% of the vote.
The trust he has among MPs – and the vindication his predictions have gained – may make him the most likely next set of hands to steer the ship.
The Leader of the House of Commons may have had a dress rehearsal for being prime minister this week, after stepping in for an absent Liz Truss at a debate.
“The prime minister is not under a desk,” Mordaunt confirmed Tuesday – in a performance that seemed as much about pitching herself as it did about helping the PM.
Mordaunt confirmed in a tweet Friday afternoon that she was running to replace Truss – the first MP to do so.
She promised a “fresh start” for the country, aiming “to unite our country, deliver our pledges and win the next general election.”
Mordaunt came third in the last leadership election, narrowly missing out on being put before the members. With 105 votes from MPs in the last election, she too is expected to clear the newt threshold. She is expected to perform well among the party membership, in part due to her military credentials. Mordaunt is a reservist of the Royal Navy and served a short spell as Secretary of State for Defense.
Like Sunak, she is from the more moderate wing of the party. There was even talk among MPs of the two forming a “dream team” ticket, although this is yet to materialize – and it is unclear if either would accept being chancellor over taking the top job.
Badenoch came fourth in this summer’s leadership election– securing only 59 votes from MPs – but was consistently rated by pollsters as a favorite among Conservative grassroots members.
One of the younger MPs in the running, Badenoch quickly won the endorsement of long-serving Tory grandee Michael Gove, who praised her as the “outstanding talent” in the party.
Badenoch is from the right of the Tory party – and in her previous leadership bid suggested that the government’s climate targets might prove too costly.
With Truss’s votes from MPs now up for grabs, Badenoch may have an outside chance of clearing the threshold and making it to the members’ vote.
Boris Johnson is flying back to the UK from his Caribbean holiday and plans to join the race to replace Truss, Britain’s PA Media news agency reported Friday.
UK Trade Minister Sir James Duddridge, a close Johnson ally, told PA Media that he had been in contact with Johnson via Whatsapp, saying that Johnson had sent him: “‘I’m flying back, Dudders. We are going to do this. I’m up for it’.”
The minister also said via Twitter “I hope you enjoyed your holiday boss. Time to come back. Few issues at the office that need addressing. #bringbackboris.”
Sky News said one of its reporters, who boarded the flight Johnson took, snapped a picture of the former prime minister and his wife Carrie Johnson on board, adding that the couple received several boos from fellow passengers.
Multiple allies have made the case that Johnson could be a unity candidate who could bring stability to the country, despite the fact he resigned in disgrace only a few months ago after a series of scandals came together, making his position untenable.
When asked by CNN how they could justify Johnson standing to be PM again, one MP who campaigned for Johnson in the 2019 leadership campaign, said: “Socialists will destroy our economy and if you don’t understand that then I genuinely fear for our future.”
Another MP who supported Johnson in 2019 said he was the only candidate who could comfortably win over both Conservative MPs and members of the Conservative Party.
Johnson’s closest allies said they were aware he was being actively lobbied in the hours after Truss’ resignation speech, making the case to him that he represented the party’s best shot at stability in the medium term.
In his final speech as prime minister outside 10 Downing Street, Johnson made one of his characteristic allusions to ancient history. He said he would “return to his plough” like the Roman statesman Cincinnatus – suggesting a quieter life on the backbenches. But that’s not how Cincinnatus saw out his days. He was called back from his plough to return to Rome for a second term – this time as a dictator.
Some suspect that the new 100-vote threshold is an attempt by the Conservative Party to render another Johnson term impossible. But Johnson’s campaign has already started to gather momentum. A number of prominent Conservative MPs announced Friday that they will back him – even though Johnson has yet to confirm he will stand.
As Conservative MPs are currently facing electoral oblivion, their desire for self-preservation should not be underestimated. Less than three years ago Johnson delivered an 80-seat majority, and the right of the Tory party may think he is the only candidate capable of saving their jobs.
If Johnson was to secure the required 100 votes from MPs, he would be expected to perform extremely well in a vote by the party membership.
It is a sign of the disorder of the last days of Truss’s government that she elevated Grant Shapps to home secretary – despite not offering him a ministerial role of any sort when she first took office.
Shapps served as transport secretary under Boris Johnson. He put himself forward to succeed him in the previous leadership election – only to withdraw from the race three days later, after failing to secure the requisite 20 MPs’ votes to proceed to the next round.
The new threshold will likely prove too high for Shapps – but his criticism of Truss’ government from the outset may have won him the support of more MPs than last time.
Suella Braverman’s resignation as home secretary on Wednesday night may have been a precursor to a possible leadership bid. The former attorney-general has not run before – but with her hard-line stance on immigration, might look set to drag the party further to the right.
Tom Tugendhat emerged as a surprise favorite among Tory members and the wider public, despite only coming fifth in the last leadership election. Having not served as a cabinet member before that contest, Tugendhat distanced himself from the moral mess of Johnson’s government and promised a “clean start” for Britain. After serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tugendhat was made security minister by Truss.
Ben Wallace, defense secretary and another ex-military man, was tipped to succeed Johnson in the last leadership contest – polling extremely well among Conservative members. However, he never ran in that election, and he has now ruled himself out of this race.
Former prime minister Theresa May has also been floated as a possible “unity” candidate to succeed Truss. May tried to bring together the warring wings of the Conservative party over Brexit, in move that ultimately saw her replaced by Boris Johnson. As the party has proven unable to resolve its disputes this time round, another attempt at compromise may soon be in order.
U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned after 44 days in office after a failed tax-cutting budget that rocked financial markets and led to a revolt within her own Conservative Party, giving her the shortest PM tenure in U.K. history. What do you think?
“Call me old-fashioned, but whatever happened to barricading yourself in your office with a gun?”
Phil O’Connell, Fly Rail Operator
“Six weeks is ample time to realize that Britain isn’t worth saving.”
Randal Lam, Freelance Companion
“Very unwise to quit her job in this economy she tanked.”
“If this was a relationship, I feel like at this point Britain’s friends would be sitting down with it like, ’Listen, honey, you’ve been through four prime ministers in six years. They can’t all be the problem, huh?” he added.
Noah also spotted what might be the worst part of the experience of Truss ― and it involves a head of lettuce. Last week, The Daily Star tabloid launched a livestream of an unrefrigerated head of lettuce with a blunt question for the title: “Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?”
“Oh, that’s humiliating,” Noah said. “Imagine being so bad at your job that you lose a joke contest. Because at first, people were like, ‘Ha ha! I bet she can’t last longer than a head of lettuce!’ And then by the end of it, they were like, ’Should the lettuce be prime minister?’”
LONDON — It is a British cliché that a week is a long time in politics. Liz Truss proved it true on Thursday when she became the shortest-serving British prime minister in history. In a matter of days, her U-turn on economic plans that made global markets jittery and the resignations of key ministers prompted calls from within Truss’ party for her to step down. But the shakeup at the top is hardly an outlier in the recent history of Britain’s Conservatives, whose latest troubles have been years in the making.
DAVID CAMERON’S DECISION
Some observers date the current leadership crisis to Conservative Party infighting over the role of the European Union during Cameron’s 2010-2016 tenure Britain’s leader. The pro-EU prime minister decided to resolve the debate by calling for a nationwide referendum on Britain’s membership in the bloc. With almost 52% voting to leave and 48% to remain, the 2016 referendum resulted in a divisive Brexit. It also led Cameron to resign.
MAY’S BREXIT MANDATE
Theresa May succeeded Cameron as Conservative leader and prime minister on a mandate to “deliver Brexit.” She remained in the job for three years and 11 days, by which time the U.K.’s departure from the Europe Union was still pending. The House of Commons three times rejected the withdrawal agreement May’s government negotiated with the EU. It was a tumultuous time mired in frustration in Brussels and discord in Westminster. Following a string of Brexit-related resignations from her government and under pressure from within her party, May ended up resigning.
BORIS JOHNSON’S TURN
In July 2019, Leave campaigner Boris Johnson became Britain’s third prime minister in just over three years. Johnson made Brexit finally happen in January 2020 after four years of international squabbling. The emergence of the coronavirus pandemic weeks later threw the U.K. off course again. Johnson’s was accused of moving too slowly to limit travel, create an effective test-and-trace program and to project vulnerable older people. Though Johnson won praise for a swift rollout of a nationwide vaccination program, the tight restrictions on businesses, public events and private gatherings the government ultimately imposed would lay the groundwork for the end of his tenure.
WHOSE PARTY IS THIS?
Photos and witness accounts emerged indicating Johnson and government officials broke their own COVID-19 rules on social gatherings during the pandemic. In April of this year, Johnson received a fixed penalty notice for attending one such gathering. He was the first sitting U.K. prime minister to be punished for breaking the law. The scandal, dubbed “partygate” by the British press, triggered a wave of disgust across Britain, especially among those who were not permitted to attend the funerals of loved ones who died during the pandemic. Though Johnson survived a no-confidence vote over that, revelations in July that he appointed a deputy chief whip accused of misconduct led to a wave of ministerial resignations. It cost Johnson his job. He announced his resignation on July 7.
TRUSS MAKES HISTORY
Johnson ally and former Foreign Secretary Liz Truss swept past former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak in September to become Britain’s third female prime minister – and the last leader to meet with Queen Elizabeth II. However, Truss is likely to be remembered for her brevity. After resigning Thursday, she holds the record as the shortest-serving leader in modern British history, clocking up a mere 44 days in office. Her demise was swift. The pound plummeted after the announcement of her mini-budget, which included billions in unfunded tax cuts. To stymie the damage, Truss made U-turns on major tax policies and replaced her Treasury chief. But the resignation Wednesday of Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who left with pointed criticism of her boss, unleashed a torrent of Tory calls for Truss to resign, too.
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AP journalist Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed to this story.
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Follow AP’s coverage of British politics at https://apnews.com/hub/british-politics
LONDON — It was a revolution 11 long years in the making.
For a small but vocal band of right-wing libertarians, Liz Truss’ appointment as U.K. prime minister on September 6 seemed the triumphant end point of an epic and improbable march that led them from the fringes of British politics to Whitehall’s grandest corridors of power.
In the course of just over a decade, a group of little-known politicians, fringe think tanks and outspoken media figures had helped drag the Tory Party, and the nation it led, from David Cameron’s vision of so-called compassionate Conservatism — hugging huskies and all — to a Brexit-backing, free-market embracing, low-tax juggernaut.
It took them four Tory prime ministers, four general elections and an era-defining referendum to do it — but with Truss in charge, they were finally living their dream. The country was to be remade in their image.
It lasted 44 chaotic days, and no more.
“They felt their moment had come at last,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University London. “This would prove that Brexit hadn’t been a ghastly mistake, but a fantastic opportunity. But of course, as it was always based on fantasy, it was always bound to collide with reality.”
Truss was elected Conservative leader — and so U.K. prime minister — last month on the votes of just 81,000 party members, a group large enough to defeat her more centrist opponent, Rishi Sunak, but still small enough to fit comfortably inside Wembley stadium, home of the England football team.
This band of true-blue believers had been wooed by her heady promises of a low-tax, low-regulation state that would embrace the opportunities provided by Brexit.
But as soon as PM Truss started to put her promises into action — via a ‘mini-budget’ on September 23 which included tens of billions of pounds in unfunded tax cuts alongside a massive energy subsidy scheme — the markets began sliding into turmoil. Within days it was clear Truss had triggered an economic crisis — and one that sent the Conservative poll ratings tumbling along with the value of the pound.
Her MPs, facing electoral oblivion, were terrified.
In the weeks that followed, Truss was forced to sack her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and U-turn on most of their economic program in a desperate bid to stabilize the markets. This week her home secretary, Suella Braverman, followed Kwarteng out the door. Her MPs became mutinous, some publicly demanding her head. Support rapidly drained away.
Truss was forced to sack her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and U-turn on most of their economic program in a desperate bid to stabilize the markets | Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Truss’ disastrous six weeks in power were an abject humiliation for the prime minister herself, of course — but also for the libertarian right of the Conservative movement that had fought its corner for years.
Winners and losers
“I’m pretty distraught about it,” said Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), one of the right-wing Westminster think tanks that inspired the Truss agenda. (He, like most of the interviewees for this article, was speaking after the abandonment of Truss’ economic program earlier this week, but before she finally resigned Thursday afternoon.)
“It did actually appear as if we had a new government that, in very broad terms, shared the IEA analysis of the problems with our economy, and it not being market-oriented enough.”
But Truss botched the “political execution” rather than economic thinking, Littlewood insisted, lamenting that “if the execution goes badly wrong, it has a rebound effect on the ideas.”
Indeed, Conservative libertarians explain the Truss debacle in various ways: She was not clear enough about what she was doing and the reasons for it; she made the announcements in the wrong sequence; she refused to match her tax cuts with spending restraint; and she failed to produce independent proof that her plans would work. There is certainly little sign of remorse.
“The position we’re in now is that these reforms basically have not been tried,” Littlewood insisted. “Her attempts to implement change were too hurried; too rushed; not thought through; naïve in some regard.”
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage was another right-wing libertarian who had been advocating for low-tax, small-state ideals for decades.
“I think the hope was that the Kwarteng budget was going to mark a very significant moment,” Farage said. “That now appears to be dead. And I would have thought dead for a very, very long time. The people in the Conservative Party that I talk to, who think on my wavelength … have pretty much given up.”
But Tories opposed to the libertarian agenda are delighted at its failure — if not the disastrous fallout, for country and party alike. “The mild flirtation with Tea Party libertarianism has been strangled at birth, and I think for the general good fortune of the Tory Party that has to be seen as a good thing,” Tory backbencher Simon Hoare told the BBC.
One serving Cabinet minister added: “[The libertarians] are going to have to adjust to reality like the rest of us. They can’t buck the market.”
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage was another right-wing libertarian who had been advocating for low-tax, small-state ideals for decades | Peter Summers/Getty Images
Nicky Morgan, a former Cabinet minister who previously co-chaired the centrist ‘One Nation’ caucus of Tory MPs, said her party must now return to its former broad-church approach.
“The task for the ‘One Nation’ wing of the party is almost to ignore the libertarian right and get on with reasserting one-nation politics, and prove to everyone from Liz Truss downward that if we want to stay in power, then being sane and sensible in the middle ground is a much stronger place to be,” she said.
The long march
For some on the conservative right, so-called Trussonomics was the inevitable end point of a march toward deregulation that began with the Brexit movement in the early 2010s. Farage was one of a number of Brexiteer thinkers who wanted the U.K. to leave the EU in a bid to drive up business competitiveness.
Bale said the libertarian strain in the Conservative Party had in fact been present for decades, but that the Brexit cause emboldened it and brought it to the fore.
The turning point came in 2011, when a number of right-wing Conservative MPs — many of them newly-elected the previous year — rebelled against then-Prime Minister David Cameron and voted in support of a referendum on EU membership. “That was the first time they realized their strength,” Bale said.
Across the country, anti-EU sentiment was rising, fueled by the eurozone crisis and soaring levels of immigration.
“There was a ‘push me, pull you’ going on,” Farage said. “The stronger UKIP got, the more emboldened the Tory Brexiteers got. 2011 was the moment when UKIP suddenly started coming second in by-elections. This group in the Tory Party, and this group outside the Tory Party — namely my group — always had very similar policy goals.”
Cameron was spooked, and the pressure from within and without his party forced him to agree a referendum on Britain’s EU membership. It was won by the Leave-supporting side in 2016, cheered on by a highly vocal section of the right-wing U.K. press which also supports low taxes and deregulation.
“The referendum allowed them all to coalesce around a single issue,” said David Yelland, a former editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned, Brexit-backing Sun newspaper, who now speaks out against the influence of right-wing media.
“The right of the Conservative Party and their supporters in the media and the think tank world knew they had one go at this. They had to win Brexit, otherwise they were finished. And they did. And since then that has emboldened them.”
Keep pushing on
With Cameron forced from office, the group’s next battle was with his successor Theresa May, a euroskeptic Remainer who tried to negotiate a less drastic form of Brexit which would have left Britain tied to many of Brussels’ rules and regulations.
Farage said the “loose relationship” between pro-Brexit libertarians inside and outside the Tory Party maintained its hold over the new Tory leader, ultimately blocking her proposed Brexit deal in Parliament and forcing her resignation.
Theresa May was a euroskeptic Remainer who tried to negotiate a less drastic form of Brexit | WPA pool photo by Henry Nicholls/Getty Images
Boris Johnson then emerged as the next prime minister, a genuine ‘Vote Leave’ campaigner who was able to push through the hard-nosed form of Brexit the group had dreamed of. But his personal brand of domestic politics was less to their taste — a sort of high-spending boosterism which appealed to millions of Tory and pro-Brexit voters, if not to the libertarian right.
“The core Brexiteers were not ultra-libertarians,” explained former Tory MP Stewart Jackson, who lost his job as a ministerial bag carrier to vote with the pro-Brexit rebels in 2011.
“There were a few that wanted [London to become] Singapore-on-Thames … but the bulk of Brexiteer MPs and definitely Brexiteer voters were much more what I would call communitarian.”
But Jackson said the vacuum of ideas about how best to respond to Brexit, even among many Brexiteers, left space for the libertarians to fill. “They were the only game in town in terms of a new intellectual concept that the U.K. could consolidate on, being outside the European Union,” he said.
With Johnson’s departure in July following a series of personal scandals, the likes of Littlewood — as well as his brothers in arms at neighboring think tanks the Taxpayers Alliance and the Adam Smith Institute — found themselves in the ascendance.
Their ideas found favor with Truss — who despite not being a Brexiteer at the referendum, was a follower of the libertarian cause — and her Chancellor-to-be Kwarteng. The ambitious pair were among colleagues who wrote a now infamous 2012 pamphlet named “Britannia Unchained” offering radical right-wing solutions to Britain’s economic problems.
Less than two months after Johnson’s departure, their economic prospectus was finally put to the test — and exploded on impact.
The arc of history
As Truss and Kwarteng look back at the ashes of their brief Downing Street careers, the pro-Brexit right is licking its wounds and wondering where it goes next.
Shanker Singham, another libertarian thinker who is close to Truss and the IEA, insisted it was too soon to tell whether the low-tax, ultra-competition agenda is too damaged by the Trussonomics experiment to resurface in the near future.
Brexit supporters march in Fulham in the final leg of the March To Leave Rally on March 29, 2019 | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
“It’s a very febrile atmosphere, and things have to settle down,” he said. “There’s a big arc of history here, and Liz Truss’ mini-budget does not suddenly transform the arc of history.”
Littlewood insists there will be another chance to implement libertarian policies in less than a decade, given the structural economic problems Britain faces.
“Had this [mini-budget] gone as smoothly as I had imagined it in my dreams, rather than as badly as it has gone in my living nightmare, I think we could have got quite a lot of this done now,” he said. “Unfortunately, a large amount of it is off the table now, but I think it will have to be returned to.”
Brexiteers of a different persuasion — of which there are many — are hoping for an urgent change of direction, however.
“The vision of Brexit as ‘Davos on Thames’, only ever held by 10 percent of the Conservative electorate, is dead,” wrote Matthew Goodwin, an academic who has charted the rise of the populist right. “The only way forward for the Conservative Party now is to get back to what Brexit was really about for the 90 percent, and to reconnect with their 2019 electorate.”
But Bale, of Queen Mary University, believes the libertarian strain among Conservatives will forever lurk just beneath the surface, insisting their radical solutions to the nation’s ills have still not been properly tried.
“When the spaceship doesn’t arrive,” he said, “the cultists simply say ‘we got the date wrong’, and that it will be coming in two years’ time.”
Additional reporting by Annabelle Dickson.
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Prime Minister Liz Truss announced her resignation just 44 days after Queen Elizabeth II apppointed her. The change comes as the U.K. struggles with inflation over 10%, and at a 40-year high. Ramy Inocencio has more.
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LONDON — Westminster is in turmoil, the U.K. economy is floundering, and Tory MPs are about to pick their fifth prime minister in just over six years.
But in a sign of total normality in this fully-functioning Western democracy, Brits have instead spent much of the past week fixated on a livestream of a head of iceberg lettuce, wearing a wig.
Set up by tabloid the Daily Star, the paper’s newshounds bet big that a 60p supermarket lettuce would outlast Prime Minister Liz Truss, after her fledgling regime was gripped by unprecedented chaos in its first few weeks.
And they were right. Truss finally resigned Thursday, just 44 days into the job, making her the U.K.’s shortest-serving prime minister. The Daily Star broke out the Champagne, declaring: “The Lettuce Outlasted Liz Truss.”
So how did Truss put her salad days behind her, and why did she wilt under the public gaze?
Let POLITICO take you on a whirlwind tour of Truss’ 44-day premiership — but be warned, there are more than a few icebergs ahead.
Smashing the orthodoxy
September 6: It all started so well. After seeing off suave-but-dull rival Rishi Sunak in a rancorous Conservative leadership contest, Truss looked triumphant as she took the reins at No. 10 Downing Street and vowed to “transform Britain into an aspiration nation.” She had good reason to be cheerful, too, vacuuming up support from thousands of grassroots Tory members, getting the key Conservative-backing newspapers on side, and confidently brushing off the fact that the majority of her own Tory MPs had doubts about her competence. What did they know, after all? They’d only worked with Truss in Westminster for the past decade.
September 8: Upon taking office, Truss picked her close friend and neighbor Kwasi Kwarteng as her top finance minister, and immediately tasked him with taking on the stale “orthodoxy” at the Treasury. In a savvy first move, Kwarteng immediately sacked the most senior civil servant in the ministry — a man so clever his name is literally Tom Scholar — and so ensured that outmoded, orthodox qualities like “experience,” “credibility” and “economic literacy” were expunged at just the right time … amid a global economic crisis.
Also September 8: A busy day this one, what with Britain’s longest-reigning monarch dying that same afternoon. As the country mourned Queen Elizabeth II, Truss faced her first big communications test on the job: How to capture the nation’s deep sense of grief? She duly rose to the occasion, ripping up lines painstakingly prepared by career officials to deliver a heartfelt tribute with all the enthusiasm of a Q4 sales report. The country wept, for at least one Liz.
September 23: The queen’s death put normal politics on ice for a couple of weeks. But the pause allowed Team Truss to put the finishing touches on their very own Mona Lisa: the mini-budget. A sleeker, more aerodynamic budget than the normal kind, this mini version did away with tired conventions like “independent fiscal scrutiny by the government’s own watchdog,” and “making the sums add up.” Instead, Truss and Kwarteng pressed ahead with debt-funded tax cuts and a multi-billion pound plan to subsidize energy bills. Kwarteng also showed he retained a populist touch with crowd-pleasing measures such as cutting taxes for the U.K.’s super-rich and removing a cap on bankers’ bonuses, all in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis — before heading off to a Champagne reception with hedge fund bosses to party the night away. Cheers!
Woke markets cancel Truss
September 26: Eek. Then came the backlash. Financial markets — famously stuffed with tofu-munching lefties who hate conservatism and everything it stands for — failed to understand the mini-budget’s genius, while the unruly pound, which probably voted to Remain in the EU, crashed to its lowest-ever level against the U.S. dollar. Kwarteng, sounding a little shaken, promised he would publish all his fully-worked-out sums in, oooh, November? That sound OK?
September 28: The pound’s reign of terror continued, and, as U.K. borrowing costs soared and British pension funds teetered on the brink of collapse, those radical communists at the Bank of England were forced to step in with an unprecedented emergency bond-buying program “to restore market functioning.” Their hippie best mates at the International Monetary Fund also got in on the act, saying Kwarteng’s plans would “likely increase inequality” and urging the government to “re-evaluate” its tax measures. Chill out, guys!
Prime Minister Liz Truss is seen returning to Downing Street | Rob Pinney/Getty Images
October 3: Phew — she made it through to the Tory party conference. Political party conferences, after all, are normally a glorious victory lap for newly-crowned leaders, but Truss again decided to smash the status quo by turning hers into a deeply embarrassing few days of U-turns, backpedaling and noisy Tory infighting. Less than 24 hours after insisting she was sticking by her economic plan, Truss suddenly junked her centerpiece proposal to cut taxes for the rich. Kwarteng admitted the idea had “become a distraction” from the government’s “overriding mission.”
October 4: Indeed, the U-turn allowed the real “overriding mission” of the government — to needlessly piss off its own MPs — to shine through. No sooner had the tax cut been ditched than Truss’ ever-loyal Cabinet ministers were onto their next target, publicly pressuring the PM not to impose a real-terms cut to social security payments. One minister even capped off the day by telling a room full of drunk communications professionals that the government’s own comms strategy was “shit.” And who could argue?
October 10-11: A week after ditching their flagship policy, Truss’ government had another go at calming the still-spooked markets. Kwarteng’s new idea? Bringing forward the publication of his next fiscal plan to a date in no way guaranteed to be, erm, spooky: October 31. The Bank of England loved the cut of his jib, again stepping in with a major market intervention to prevent what it called a “fire sale” of U.K. government bonds. Which sounded worrying.
Actually, we really love the orthodoxy, please come back
October 14: After weeks of economic turmoil, Kwarteng was dragged home from a trip to Washington D.C. so that he could be sacked on the spot while still jet-lagged — a bad day at the office by anyone’s standards. Finally free of a chancellor who had repeatedly defied her by *checks notes* implementing her exact policy wishes to the letter, the PM then ripped up her long-standing pledge to ease taxes on big business, admitting in an epic eight-minute-long press conference that she’d gone “further and faster than markets were expecting.” We’ve all been there. Reaching out to the center of the Tory party, Truss appointed former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt as her new chancellor, shoring up her faltering premiership for a full 36 hours.
October 16: Team Truss’ strenuous efforts to build bridges with her now-mutinous party ramped up another notch over the weekend, as a No. 10 insider branded her former leadership rival and ex-Cabinet colleague Sajid Javid — who had reportedly just been sounded out by Truss’ team itself about the chancellor job — “shit.” It didn’t go down too well with him, or his mates.
October 17: A biggie, as Hunt put a bullet in the entire Truss agenda, live on TV. In an astonishing move, the new finance minister issued a televised statement in which — by his own admission — he ripped up “almost all” the mini-budget pledges the Truss government had announced just a few weeks earlier. Even the energy support plan, clung to by Truss supporters as one of the few remaining positives of her premiership, was to be significantly pared back — although hard-pressed voters should be able to warm themselves this winter by standing near the giant “dumpster fire” that’s been Westminster the past six years. Truss capped another glorious day by avoiding an urgent question in the House of Commons and sending a junior Cabinet minister to reassure angry MPs that the British prime minister was not, in fact, “hiding under a desk.”
October 19: Very much the End Times. A rollercoaster of a day — if rollercoasters only went downhill — as an under-pressure Truss first offered up yet another U-turn, this time on pension payments; then a senior Truss aide was suspended as that clever “shit” quote to the Sunday newspapers got investigated by No. 10; then her home secretary was sacked and posted what was essentially an extended anti-Truss sub-tweet as a resignation letter; and then the government somehow turned a really boring House of Commons vote into a bitter row about “manhandling” its own MPs, as one of them literally cried on live TV. For those watching from abroad — this is why people in the U.K. drink a lot.
October 20: With the game finally up and her authority shot to pieces, Truss bowed to the inevitable and resigned Thursday, reeling off all her achievements in an 89-second statement on the Downing Street steps. Yet all is not lost. Tucked away in a newsroom in London, there’s one little lettuce who never lost hope. And in its still-crisp and delicious center lies the promise of national renewal. We can but dream.
It was the livestreamed spectacle watched ’round the world: a head of wet lettuce, slowly wilting in real time.
And in the end, the lettuce outlasted Liz Truss. 10 Downing Street will turn a new leaf next Thursday, marking the end of the shortest-tenured prime minister in U.K. history.
The vegetable stunt was the work of The Daily Star, a British tabloid that watched Truss’ favorability ratings endive, and crafted the radicchio-lous “lettuce” competition to match.
On Oct. 14, as Truss’ support withered, the outlet slapped a set of googly eyes on a 60 p ($0.68) head of lettuce, set it on a table opposite a framed photo of the prime minister, and began filming.
“LIVE: Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?” the paper asked. “Will Liz Truss still be Prime Minister within the 10 day shelf-life of a lettuce?” An accompanying YouTube channel dedicated to the gag quickly amassed 40,000 likes.
As the days passed, the veggie’s handlers set up the lettuce in increasingly elaborate sets ― eventually settling on a blond wig for the vegetable.
The stream gained political traction itself, with opposition leaders seizing on the stunt to highlight Truss’ failings.
“The chaos goes right to the Prime Minister, to Downing Street,” Labour MP Chris Bryant told Sky News. “We don’t have a government, the lettuce might as well be running the country.”
After Truss delivered her resignation in a crisp address Thursday, the Daily Star lowered a crown atop the seven-day-old lettuce and, as the national anthem played, placed the Truss portrait face-down.
Disco lights, party music and empty bottles of booze soon followed, as the chyron declared, “This lettuce outlasted Liz Truss.”
The antic was reportedly inspired by an early October column in The Economist, wherein the authors proclaimed Truss’ political power gone, however long she might hold the office.
“Take away the ten days of mourning after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and [Truss] had seven days in control,” they wrote. “That is roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.”
1994 – As a university student, Truss calls for abolishing the monarchy at a Liberal Democratic conference, “We do not believe people are born to rule.”
1996 – Truss joins the Conservative Party.
1996-2000 – Works for Shell, eventually becoming a commercial manager.
2000-2005 – Economic director at Cable & Wireless.
2006-2010 – Councillor in the London borough of Greenwich.
May 2006 – A Daily Mail article exposes an extramarital affair between Truss and MP Mark Field, who had been assigned to her as a political mentor. The affair is thought to have ended in June 2005.
2008-2010 – Deputy director of Reform, a think tank.
2009 – Truss is selected to be the Conservative MP candidate for South West Norfolk. After a demand by some local party members that she end her candidacy, citing her past affair with Field, Truss survives a vote and remains the candidate.
2010 – Elected MP for South West Norfolk.
2012 – Co-authors “Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity,” a book that describes the British people as ‘among the worst idlers in the world,’ who ‘are more interested in football and pop music’ than working hard.
September 2012-July 2014 – Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Education and Childcare.
July 2014-July 2016 – Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
February 20, 2016 – In a Twitter post, Truss announces that she supports the “Remain” position on Brexit.
July 2016-June 2017 – Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
June 2017 – Truss is demoted to chief secretary to the Treasury. She serves in the position until July 2019.
October 11, 2017 – Truss tells BBC2 she would now vote to leave the European Union if the Brexit referendum were to be held again, “I have changed my mind….I believed that there would be major economic problems. Those haven’t come to pass and I have also seen the opportunities.”
July 2019-September 2021 – Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade
September 2019 – Is appointed minister for women and equalities.
December 2019 – Is appointed chief post-Brexit negotiator with the EU, tasked with settling the Northern Ireland protocol.
September 15, 2021 – Is appointed foreign secretary.
October 14, 2022 – Truss says she is scrapping plans to reverse a rise in business taxes, a move that will save £18 billion ($20 billion), after a revolt by investors and members of her own Conservative Party worried about the impact of soaring government borrowing at a time of decades-high inflation. Truss also fires finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng.
October 20, 2022 – Truss announces her intention to resign just six weeks into her term after a growing number of her own Conservative Party’s lawmakers say they cannot support her any longer. She will remain prime minister until her successor is chosen.
It ended just as everyone was predicting: Liz Truss has resigned as UK’s prime minister, just 44 days since taking over the top job, thereby making her stint at 10 Downing Street the shortest one in British parliamentary history. After a stormy session at the House of Commons yesterday over an anti-fracking law, her fate was sealed. But some say her fate was sealed the moment her Chancellor of Exchequer, and close personal friend, Kwasi Kwarteng, presented that disastrous mini-budget, which sent the markets into a tailspin and the British pound to record lows against the US dollar.
Now comes the big question. With Truss’ departure, is it time for Rishi Sunak to finally take over the reins of the prime ministership? As per a report in the British newspaper The Times, Sunak’s supporters feel that because he was a runner-up to Truss to take over the leadership of the Conservative Party, it is only natural for him to succeed Truss, now that she is out.
In fact, many social media users have already taken to Twitter, sharing their views on who should be UK’s next PM.
A user named Michael Otadende posted a video of Rishi Sunak counting flaws in Liz Truss’s economy related policies. In the caption he wrote, “Remember when Rishi Sunak told everybody about the pitfalls of Liz Truss’ plans?”
Another user named Arjun too seemed quite confident about Sunak’s appointment when he wrote that it’s going to be a Happy Diwali for Rishi Sunak.
Veteran journalist and commentator Piers Morgan too weighed in and said that Rishi Sunak is the right person to now lead the country and restore some kind of stability and integrity into the parliamentary pricess. “These are serious times and we need a serious & competent Prime Minister,” his tweet added.
Seize the moment @RishiSunak – you’re the right person to now lead the country & restore some kind of stability/integrity. These are serious times and we need a serious & competent Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/Yk7NAjr4OK
However, not all are in favour. Brexit Party Member, Ben Habib sounded not too keen over Sunak’s appointment as he wrote that Sunak borrowed more than any chancellor in history and exited during an energy crisis, with supply chains broken and record levels of tax and inflation which were all created by him. “Appoint him as PM at your peril @Conservatives”
Note:@RishiSunak borrowed more than any chancellor in history and exited during an energy crises, with supply chains broken and record levels of tax and inflation; all created by him
Susan Dalgety said that she doesn’t care whether Rishi Sunak is “up for the job” or Penny Mordaunt fancies a shot as it is not about the personal ambitions of second-class politicians, but about the lives and future of UK and its citizens. “There must be a general election, not a Tory coronation.”
I don’t care whether Rishi Sunak is “up for the job” or Penny Mordaunt fancies a shot. This is not about the personal ambitions of second class politicians, it’s about our lives and our country’s future. There must be a general election, not a Tory coronation.
Liz Truss will go down in history as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, a leader whose grasp on power was so tenuous in recent days it spawned a jokey online contest to see whether she would outlast a head of lettuce
LONDON — Liz Truss will go down in history as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, a leader whose grasp on power was so tenuous in recent days it spawned a jokey online contest to see whether she would outlast a head of lettuce. The lettuce won.
Liz Truss: 45 days, Conservative; Took office Sept. 6, 2022 and resigned Oct. 20, 2022 with plans to stay in office until a replacement is named.
George Canning: 121 days; Tory; April 10, 1827-Aug. 8, 1827; died.
Frederick John Robinson, Viscount Goderich: 144 days; Tory; Aug 31, 1827-Jan.21, 1828; replaced.
Bonar Law: 210 days, Conservative; Oct. 23, 1922- May 20, 1923; resigned due to ill health.
William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, Whig; 236 days, Nov. 6, 1756-June 29, 1757; replaced.
William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne: 267 days; Whig; July 13, 1782-April 5, 1783; replaced.
Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss speaks during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons in London, on October 19.
Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament/AP
Liz Truss’s resignation brings to an ignominious end her catastrophic tenure in Downing Street, which appeared doomed ever since Truss’s flagship economic agenda sent markets into panic and led to a fall in the value of the pound.
She won support from Conservatives members by promising low-tax, pro-growth policies – derided by her critics as a lurch towards trickle-down economics – but within weeks of coming to power she disavowed the plans in a humiliating pivot, firing her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and ditching virtually all of the fiscal agenda in the wake of a market backlash.
It came after investors rejected an announcement by the Truss government in late September that it would slash taxes while ramping up borrowing in a bid to produce faster growth, citing concerns that the plan would push up inflation just as the Bank of England wants to bring it down.
Fears also crept in about the sustainability of government debt at a time of rapidly rising interest rates.
The pound crashed to a record low against the US dollar, while bond prices slumped, sending yields soaring. That pushed mortgage rates much higher, and brought some pensions funds to the brink of default.
The Bank of England was forced to announce three separate interventions to avoid a full-scale meltdown in the UK government bond market.
Truss meanwhile failed to regain control of an increasingly mutinous Conservative Party, and her Home Secretary Suella Braverman launched a blistering attack on her leadership after leaving the role on Wednesday.
A final chaotic display saw Truss allies accused of manhandling lawmakers to force them to vote against a fracking ban on Wednesday evening.
LONDON — Liz Truss has resigned as U.K. prime minister after a chaotic six weeks in office, saying she “cannot deliver the mandate” on which she was elected.
In a short but dramatic televised statement outside No. 10 Downing Street Thursday, Truss admitted she could no longer command the support of her party and that a rapid-fire Conservative leadership election will take place over the next week to choose her successor.
Truss’ resignation after just 44 days makes her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history — an extraordinary and unwanted tag she could scarcely have imagined when she was selected as leader by Tory members on September 6.
But in less than two months in office she triggered a meltdown in financial markets, sacked two of her most senior ministers, was forced into multiple policy U-turns and ultimately lost the backing of her own MPs.
Her successor will have to resolve significant tensions within the ruling Conservative party over the U.K.’s economic approach, while facing a yawning budget deficit which must be filled with tax rises or deep spending cuts. They will also face pressure for a general election, although — given their disastrous poll ratings — the Tories are likely to resist calling one until legally required to do so in 2024 or January 2025.
“I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” Truss said in her statement Thursday. “I have therefore spoken to his majesty the king to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party.”
Turmoil
Truss had faced a disastrous start to her premiership after unveiling a radical economic plan of unfunded tax cuts on September 23 which spooked financial markets, sent U.K. borrowing costs soaring and collapsed her party’s poll ratings to a record low.
She attempted to steady her faltering administration last week by sacking her friend and chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and replacing him with a center-ground choice, her former leadership rival Jeremy Hunt. He immediately junked her entire economic program in an effort to calm the markets and bring down Britain’s borrowing costs.
But Truss’ premiership disintegrated Wednesday night amid chaotic scenes in the House of Commons, where party enforcers struggled to marshal mutinous Tory MPs in a crucial vote. Earlier in the day Truss had been forced to suspend one of her closest aides and sacked her home secretary, Suella Braverman, enraging her right-wing supporters.
The turmoil prompted more Conservative MPs to go public with their demands for Truss to leave office, with dozens more calling for her to go behind the scenes.
Truss then held crisis talks Thursday morning with Graham Brady, chairman of the powerful 1922 Committee, which sets leadership contest rules; Deputy PM Thérèse Coffey; and Conservative Party Chairman Jake Berry. Together they concluded she could no longer command the support of her own MPs.
Speaking to reporters in Westminster Thursday afternoon, Brady said the plan as agreed with Berry was to conclude the leadership election by October 28, meaning a new prime minister will be in place before Hunt’s next big fiscal statement on October 31.
Nominations will close Monday at 2 p.m., and in a move that is expected to substantially narrow the field compared to the past summer’s 11-strong contest, candidates will need the backing of at least 100 fellow Tory MPs to progress. If only one candidate reaches that threshold Monday, they will be crowned leader that same day.
If there are three candidates who manage to garner that number of backers, Tory MPs will vote again to whittle them down to a final two before the contest is opened up to the party’s approximately 180,000 grassroots members. The contest will be wrapped up by next Friday at the latest.
The favorites to succeed Truss as PM include Rishi Sunak, the former U.K. chancellor who won more backing from Tory MPs than any other candidate last time round, but who she defeated in a head-to-head ballot of Tory members over the summer.
Also in the running are Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt and — incredibly — former PM Boris Johnson, who remains wildly popular among Tory Party members. Johnson, who left office only last month, is currently on holiday in the Caribbean with his wife Carrie. Hunt has already ruled himself out of the running.
Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader, called for an immediate general election so that the British people could choose their next leader.
He told broadcasters on Thursday that “we can’t have a revolving door of chaos, we can’t have another experiment at the top of the Tory Party. There is an alternative, and that is a stable Labour government. The country should be entitled to have their say.”
London — A rising chorus of members of U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss’ own party were calling for her to step down Thursday morning after support for the premiere collapsed spectacularly not even two months into her tenure. Truss faced a highly uncertain future after a parliamentary vote descended into total chaos on Wednesday night, with members of her Conservative party shouting and swearing at each other, and some claiming they were physically manhandled. She was expected to make a statement outside her residence at Number 10 Downing Street at around 1:30pm local time (8:30am Eastern).
The Wednesday vote, which was on the future of fracking in the U.K., had initially been billed by Conservative party whips as a confidence vote in the government; Conservative members of parliament (MPs) were told that if they didn’t back the government’s position in favor of fracking, they’d be deemed rebellious and expelled from the party. It would have put a lot of MPs in the position of being forced to support fracking despite their opposition to the controversial practice.
In this handout photo provided by UK Parliament, Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss speaks during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons in London, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022.
Jessica Taylor/AP
Just minutes before the vote, however, Truss’ government said it would no longer be taken as a confidence vote. The reversal led to confusion, which descended into chaos as the Conservatives’ chief whip, whose authority had been undermined by the late change in plans, reportedly resigned. Hours later, Truss’ office said the whip remained in her job, which only increased the private outcry from party members over the mayhem.
One Conservative MP was quoted anonymously by multiple British news outlets as deriding the debacle as “the most bullying, screaming and shouting” they had ever seen, while another was heard saying, “I am f****** furious and I don’t give a f*** any more.”
Charles Walker, a senior Conservative member of parliament, expressed his outrage to a BBC News crew that was covering the events live as they unfolded inside the House of Commons.
“This whole affair is inexcusable,” Walker told BBC News. “It is a pitiful reflection on the parliamentary Conservative Party at every level, and it reflects really badly, obviously, on the government of the day.” Walker added that he didn’t believe there was any coming back from the chaos for Truss’ government.
“All those people that put Liz Truss in No 10, I hope it was worth it”
“I’m livid, and you know, I really shouldn’t say this, but I hope all those people that put Liz Truss in Number 10 – I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth it for the ministerial red box, I hope it was worth it to sit round the cabinet table. Because the damage they have done to our party is extraordinary… I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of talentless people putting their tick in the right box – not because it’s in the national interest, but because it’s in their own personal interest to achieve ministerial position.”
Earlier on Wednesday, in a major blow to Truss even before the chaotic scenes unfolded in parliament – her Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the cabinet minister in charge of immigration and law enforcement, resigned. She stepped down after it emerged that she had sent an official document via her personal email account, in breach of government rules. She apologized for the infraction in her resignation letter, but also hit out at Truss.
“The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes. Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics. I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility: I resign,” Braverman said. “It is obvious to everyone that we are going through a tumultuous time. I have concerns about the direction of this government. Not only have we broken key pledges that were promised to our voters, but I have had serious concerns about this Government’s commitment to honoring manifesto commitments.”
But as more and more Conservative MPs expressed a desire for Truss to go on Thursday, just how that might happen remained unclear. Truss, for her part, has given no indication that she would be willing to resign, declaring herself “a fighter, not a quitter.”
Under Conservative party rules, there cannot be another vote of no confidence in a prime minister within a year. That process — through which the party elects a new PM internally — is what brought Truss to the job about six weeks ago, after Boris Johnson was ousted amid a series of scandals. Party members can, however, change those rules.
In the U.K., general elections must take place at least every five years. They are scheduled by the government in power. While the deadline for the next election is January 2025, one can be called anytime during the interim period.
Truss and the Conservative party are polling at historic lows against the opposition Labour party, meaning the Conservative government — under Truss or anyone tapped by the party to replace her — will be extremely reluctant to call a general election now.
Labour party members have been demanding a new election for weeks, eager to capitalize on the chaos gripping their opponents and take over the British government for the first time in more than a decade.
Those calls will not be silenced to any degree even if the Conservatives do decide to boot Truss and hold another leadership contest.
LONDON — British Prime Minister Liz Truss described herself as “a fighter and not a quitter” Wednesday as she faced a hostile opposition and fury from her own Conservative Party over her botched economic plan. Within hours of the defiant statement, her government was teetering on the verge of collapse.
A senior member of the government left her post with a fusillade of criticism at Truss, and a House of Commons vote descended into acrimony and accusations of bullying,
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she resigned after breaching rules by sending an official document from her personal email account. She used her resignation letter to lambaste Truss, saying she had “concerns about the direction of this government.”
“The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes,” she said. “Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics.”
Braverman is a popular figure on the Conservative Party’s right wing and a champion of more restrictive immigration policies who ran unsuccessfully for party leader this summer, a contest won by Truss.
Braverman was replaced as home secretary, the minister responsible for immigration and law and order, by former Cabinet minister Grant Shapps. He’s a high-profile supporter of Rishi Sunak, the former Treasury chief defeated by Truss in the final round of the Conservative leadership race.
Truss faced more turmoil in Parliament Wednesday evening on a vote over fracking for shale gas — a practice that Truss wants to resume despite opposition from many Conservatives.
With a large Conservative majority in Parliament, an opposition call for a fracking ban was easily defeated by 326 votes to 230, but some lawmakers were furious that Conservative Party whips said the vote would be treated as confidence motion, meaning the government would fall if the motion passed.
There were angry scenes in the House of Commons during and after the vote, with party whips accused of using heavy-handed tactics to gain votes. Labour lawmaker Chris Bryant said he “saw members being physically manhandled … and being bullied.”
Some lawmakers reported that that Conservative Chief Whip Wendy Morton, who is responsible for party discipline, and her deputy had resigned. But Truss’ office later said both remained in their jobs.
Conservative officials denied there had been manhandling, but in the chaos Truss herself failed to vote, according to the official record. Many Tory lawmakers were left despondent by the state of their party.
Conservative lawmaker Charles Walker said it was “a shambles and a disgrace.”
“I hope that all those people that put Liz Truss in (office), I hope it was worth it,” he told the BBC. “I hope it was worth it to sit around the Cabinet table, because the damage they have done to our party is extraordinary.”
The dramatic developments came days after Truss fired her Treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday after the economic package the pair unveiled Sept. 23 spooked financial markets and triggered an economic and political crisis.
The plan’s 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in unfunded tax cuts sparked turmoil on financial markets, hammering the value of the pound and increasing the cost of U.K. government borrowing. The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent the crisis from spreading to the wider economy and putting pension funds at risk.
On Monday Kwarteng’s replacement, Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt, scrapped almost all of Truss’ tax cuts, along with her flagship energy policy and her promise of no public spending cuts. He said the government will need to save billions of pounds and there are “many difficult decisions” to be made before he sets out a medium-term fiscal plan on Oct. 31.
Speaking to lawmakers for the first time since the U-turn, Truss apologized Wednesday and admitted she had made mistakes during her six weeks in office, but insisted that by changing course she had “taken responsibility and made the right decisions in the interest of the country’s economic stability.”
Opposition lawmakers shouted “Resign!” as she spoke in the House of Commons.
Asked by opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, “Why is she still here?” Truss retorted: “I am a fighter and not a quitter. I have acted in the national interest to make sure that we have economic stability.”
Official figures released Wednesday showed U.K. inflation rose to 10.1% in September, returning to a 40-year high first hit in July, as the soaring cost of food squeezed household budgets. While inflation is high around the world — driven up by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its effect on energy supplies — polls show most Britons blame the government for the country’s economic pain.
With opinion polls giving the Labour Party a large and growing lead, many Conservatives now believe their only hope of avoiding electoral oblivion is to replace Truss. But she insists she is not stepping down, and legislators are divided about how to get rid of her.
A national election does not have to be held until 2024. Truss appeared to rule out calling an early election, saying Wednesday that “what is important is we work together … to get through this winter and protect the economy.”
Under Conservative Party rules, Truss technically is safe from a leadership challenge for a year, but the rules can be changed if enough lawmakers want it. There is fevered speculation about how many lawmakers have already submitted letters calling for a no-confidence vote, and tensions rose further on Wednesday evening.
As yet, there is no front-runner to succeed her. Sunak, House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and popular Defense Secretary Ben Wallace all have supporters, as does Hunt, whom many see as the de facto prime minister already.
Some even favor the return of Boris Johnson, who was ousted in the summer after becoming enmeshed in ethics scandals.
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Indian-origin British Home Secretary Suella Braverman resigned on Wednesday after a “mistake” in using her private email for ministerial communication in London.
Braverman was only appointed Home Secretary 43 days ago when British Prime Minister Liz Truss took charge at 10 Downing Street. Her exit followed a face-to-face meeting with Truss earlier on Wednesday and posted her resignation letter on her Twitter handle.
“I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility; I resign,” the 42-year-old barrister said.
Braverman said she “sent an official document from my personal email to a trusted parliamentary colleague… as you know, the document was a draft Written Ministerial Statement about migration, due for publication imminently”.
“Nevertheless it is right for me to go. As soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported this on official channels, and informed the Cabinet Secretary,” she said.
In remarks that will deal a further blow to her boss Liz Truss, she noted that “we are going through a tumultuous time… I have concerns about the direction of this government”.
“Not only have we broken key pledges that were promised to our voters, but I have had serious concerns about this government’s commitment to honouring manifesto commitments, such as reducing overall migration numbers and stopping illegal migration, particularly the dangerous small boats crossings.”
Braverman, the Conservative Party member of Parliament for Fareham in south-east England, served as the Attorney General in the Boris Johnson-led government. She was among the first contenders to throw her hat in the ring to replace Johnson as Tory leader and Prime Minister. She was named as the Home Secretary by Prime Minister Truss.
The mother of two children is the daughter of Hindu Tamil mother Uma and Goan-origin father Christie Fernandes. Her mother migrated to the UK from Mauritius while her father migrated from Kenya in the 1960s.
Braverman is a Buddhist who attends the London Buddhist Centre regularly and took her oath of office in Parliament on the Dhammapada’ scripture of Lord Buddha’s sayings.
Her resignation comes soon after the sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor last Friday and the axing of the majority of the government’s mini-budget on Monday by his successor, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
The move is expected to further shake up Truss’ embattled leadership.
After weeks of market turmoil and countless U-turns, British Prime Minister Liz Truss apologized late Monday for what she called “the mistakes that have been made” during the opening weeks of her already imperiled premiership.
“First of all, I do want to accept responsibility and say sorry for the mistakes that have been made,” Truss said in an interview with the BBC.
“I wanted to act, to help people with their energy bills, to deal with the issue of high taxes, but we went too far and too fast,” she added.
Truss also insisted that she would “definitely” lead her Conservative Party into the next general election, which is expected in 2024.
The new PM is already fighting to maintain her post after roughly six weeks in Downing Street. A growing number of Conservative MPs are openly plotting ways to oust the prime minister, who was forced to sack her close friend Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor following a furious market response to her tax-cutting agenda.
Earlier Monday, Jeremy Hunt, Truss’ hastily-appointed replacement chancellor, used a television address to essentially tear up the manifesto which Truss ran on to ultimately win the summer’s Tory leadership contest.
“Growth requires confidence and stability,” Hunt said, in a clear admission Truss has been unable to provide either since her appointment as prime minister on September 6.
The struggling prime minister later dodged a request from the opposition Labour Party for her to appear in the House of Commons and explain the thinking behind her replacement of Kwarteng with Hunt.
Her stand-in for that parliament appearance, Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, was forced to deny that Truss was hiding from scrutiny.
“Well, the prime minister is not under a desk, as the honorable lady says,” Mordaunt said.
LONDON — The new U.K. Treasury chief will announce details of his tax and spending plans Monday, two weeks ahead of schedule, in a bid to calm markets roiled by the government’s economic policies.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt is expected to ditch more of the measures announced by the government of Prime Minister Liz Truss on Sept. 23.
Truss drafted Hunt in on Friday after she fired his predecessor, Kwasi Kwarteng. Plans by Truss and Kwarteng for 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in tax cuts — including an income tax reduction for the highest earners — without an accompanying assessment of how the government would pay for them sent the pound plunging to a record low against the U.S. dollar and the cost of government borrowing soaring.
The Bank of England was forced to step in to buy government bonds to prevent the financial crisis from spreading to the wider economy.
The government has since ditched parts of its tax-cutting plan and announced it would make a medium-term fiscal statement on Oct. 31. But the market remained jittery, and Hunt has decided he must make a statement to calm the waters even sooner.
The Treasury said he would make a public statement, followed by a statement to the House of Commons, on Monday afternoon. Hunt spent the weekend in crisis talks with Truss, and also met Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey and the head of the government’s Debt Management Office.
Hunt’s moves are aimed at restoring the government’s credibility for sound fiscal policy after Truss and Kwarteng rushed out a plan for tax cuts without detailing how they would pay for them.
The unfunded tax cuts fueled investor concern about unsustainable levels of government borrowing, which pushed up government borrowing costs, raised home mortgage costs and sent the pound plummeting to an all-time low against the dollar. The Bank of England was forced to intervene to protect pension funds squeezed by volatility in the bond market.
Hunt was under pressure to act before financial markets opened on Monday because the central bank’s support for the bond market ended Friday.
The early response from investors was positive.
The pound rose 0.5% to $1.1229 in early trading in London. The British currency is now trading for roughly the same price it was on Sept. 22, the day before Kwarteng announced the tax cuts.
Yields on 10-year government bonds, an indicator of government borrowing costs, fell to 4.060% from 4.327% on Friday. It was 3.495% on Sept. 22. Bond yields tend to rise as the risk of a borrower defaulting increases and fall as that risk declines.
But analysts warned the positive market news might only be a temporary reprieve.
“Trussenomics may have been ripped up and fed to the shredder but the author of the big gamble remains in power, and has the final say on the direction of travel,’’ said Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
“Investors are craving more stability but, given the flip-flopping we’ve had so far in her super-short tenure, economic policy uncertainty remains and that’s likely to be the key driver in the bond markets and on foreign exchange desks,” she said.
The financial fiasco has turned Truss into a lame-duck prime minister, and Conservative lawmakers are agonizing about whether to try to oust her. She took office just six weeks ago after winning a party election to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He was forced out in July after serial ethics scandals ensnared his administration.
The Conservative MPs in Britain are looking to oust a sitting Prime Minister for the second time in a year. Liz Truss is facing a no-confidence motion as more than 100 MPs of the Tories are gearing up to submit letters of no confidence in the Prime Minister. The country has, since Brexit, lost three prime ministers amid political crises.
Her economic policies that have triggered a financial as well as a political crisis have put a question mark on her 40-day old prime ministership. Conservative MPs are reportedly discussing replacing her with a joint ticket of House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak, who lost to Truss during the election.
In fact, social media is abuzz with discussions on how long she would last as the prime minister.
So, what happened?
Following Boris Johnson’s ouster, Liz Truss promised tax cuts and slashing of red tape. But her rival Rishi Sunak had warned against immediate tax cuts. He called it an act of self-sabotage, and said that the party must be wary of major spending pledges as well as tax cuts. “I would urge them to treat with caution any vision that doesn’t involve any difficult trade-offs and remember that if something sounds good to be true – then it probably is,” he said.
Chief Secretary of the Treasury Simon Clarke who worked under Sunak said that the households cannot wait for years for a tax cut. Clarke said that Truss would cut taxes in seven weeks and not seven years. Following internal criticism from backers, Sunak said he would slash taxes by 20 per cent by the end of the decade, unlike Truss who said she would cut taxes on day one.
Cut to September 23, when Britain Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng, in his “mini-budget” with an aim to break the ‘cycle of stagnation’ included tax cuts of 45 billion pounds or $50 billion. These tax cuts also included relief of 45 per cent for the highest earners.
But this pushed the pound to fall to an all-time low against the US dollar, with the cost of borrowing rising sharply. The Bank of England intervened to buy 65 billion pounds of government debt to stop an economic crisis. A spate of experts criticised the tax cuts, with Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government think-tank saying that they introduced a series of “unforced errors”, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) saying that it was “closely monitoring” the situation.
Defending their policy, Kwarteng said that the path they were on was unsustainable and that they could not have continued to raise taxes. “However, I totally understand the need to be credible with markets. We will show markets our plan is sound, credible and will work to drive growth,” he said.
But Kwarteng seems to have given in to the rising criticism, and made a U-turn on the plans to cut 45 per cent of tax for the wealthy – which was termed a tax cut for the rich.
Truss then sacked Kwarteng, who was also her longtime friend and ally, to replace with Jeremy Hunt, who had earlier served as the health secretary and foreign secretary for the Conservative governments of David Cameron and Theresa May.
Hunt’s ideas are significantly different from Truss’. He said that taxes would have to rise and spending cut in order to prevent further increases in the UK government borrowing costs.
Will Liz Truss be ousted?
However, Liz Truss is protected under a leadership challenge for a year under the party rules. But some Conservative legislators believe that if they can agree on a successor, then she can be forced to resign. Moreover, in order to change the rules, two thirds of the party’s 360 MPs would need to tell the 1922’s executive to change the rules. Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Defense Secretary Ben Wallace are among the names in the running, even though an immediate ouster is not likely.
Some also believe that this is a time for stability and that Liz Truss should be given a chance to restore order.
