Perhaps the hottest bet among U.K. bookies is not whether to sell the pound, but whether to short their embattled head of government.
Betting odds overwhelmingly predict Prime Minister Liz Truss will be turfed out before the end of the year. For bookies, the only question remaining seems to be whether a head of store-bought lettuce can outlive her rocky six-week term at 10 Downing Street, which has seen poll support for her conservative Tory Party plunge to historic lows.
As things stand, it’s not looking good either: she’s losing to the leafy vegetable (at least figuratively). If Truss resigns before the end of the year, that would make her the shortest serving U.K. prime minister in history, beating a record set in 1827 by George Canning, who died after barely four months in office.
“Things have gone from bad to worse for Liz Truss and the Tories, and we’re now looking at one of the biggest swings in recent history between elections,” said Alex Apati, spokesman for Ladbrokes betting firm, on Sunday. “Forget lettuce, the latest odds suggest Truss will do well to outlast the lifespan of a mayfly at this rate.”
At present, a £9 ($10) bet on Truss walking the plank before the year is out would only yield an extra £4 payout, implying the probability she will not survive 2022 stands at nearly 70%.
Speculation about Truss’s exit soared after a particularly scathing commentary in The Economist, which concluded last week that—once stripping out the official 10-day mourning period for the Queen’s death—Truss managed to destroy her premiership after only seven days of actual government work: “That is the shelf-life of a lettuce.”
Left-of-center newspaper Daily Star ran with the comparison, posting a live link to a “lettuce cam”, where people can follow the race between Liz Truss, symbolized by a framed portait, and the vegetable.
‘Whatever is necessary’
Installed in office in early September as the replacement for her scandal-plagued predecessor Boris Johnson, Truss’ political fortunes nosedived last month when her signature plan to grow the economy with unfunded tax cuts crashed the pound and nearly bankrupted pension funds.
Markets openly revolted after her government failed to present a shred of evidence that her trickle-down tax cuts, which favored the wealthy, would not lead to unsustainable levels of debt.
“Over the past few weeks, the government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as a kind of laboratory mice in which to carry out ultra, ultra free market experiments,” said Tory MP Robert Halfon, who said his constituents in Essex were actually frightened by her budget plans. “There’s been one horror story after another — it’s not just about tax cuts for the rich but about benefit cuts [and] cuts for public services.”
Meanwhile, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England said the U.K. had gone from comparisons with fiscally prudent Germany to being cast in the same boat as profligates Italy and Greece.
Now pundits argue the new head of the U.K. Treasury, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, is the de facto prime minister, dictating the U.K. government’s fiscal policy on Truss’s behalf. Meanwhile her party appears to be plotting internally how best to remove her from office without prompting a snap election that would almost certainly result in a wipe-out for the Tories.
On Monday, Hunt effectively reversed the bulk of her fiscal stimulus plans in order to raise an additional 32 billion pounds ($36 billion) of tax revenue per year and better balance the books.
“Growth requires confidence and stability, and the United Kingdom will always pay its way,” he said in a broadcast statement. “This government will therefore take whatever tough decisions are necessary to do so.”
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Christiaan Hetzner
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