Embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned from office on Thursday evening, ending her humiliating tenure at 10 Downing Street on her 45th day on the job, following an open revolt against her chaotic leadership. Truss will go down in history as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister so far.
Truss’ six-week long term was even shorter than the period it took to elect her for the top job. Her tenure was so tenuous in recent days it spawned a jokey online contest in Britain to see whether she would outlast a head of lettuce. Unfortunately for her, the lettuce won.
The 47-year-old outgoing prime minister will stay in charge until her successor is elected by the governing Tory party, with a speeded-up leadership election to be completed by next week.
The race for the country’s Conservative party leadership started after former Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson was dragged out of office and forced to resign on July 7, amid an open revolt by a growing number of his MPs and ministers.
Truss, who was UK’s foreign secretary at the time, was declared head of the Tory government on September 5– 60-days after Johnson’s resignation. She had beaten her rival Rishi Sunak to the top post with a series of promises to boost the economy, including an emergency budget and tweaks in tax rules.
The problems for Truss started earlier this month after she was forced to sack her finance minister and closest political ally, Kwasi Kwarteng, and abandon almost all her economic programme after their plans for vast unfunded tax cuts crashed the pound and British bonds. Approval ratings for her and the Conservative Party collapsed.
On Wednesday Truss lost the second of the government’s four most senior ministers with Suella Braverman’s explosive exit from the Cabinet, deepening the sense of chaos at Westminster.
The outgoing prime minister attempted to move on from the latest crisis by swiftly appointing Grant Shapps as the new Home Secretary.
But coming just days after she sacked Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor and brought in Jeremy Hunt who has since reversed all of her economic agenda, the latest Cabinet upheaval was widely expected to only speed up Truss’ exit from 10 Downing Street.
She stepped down on Thursday evening– hours after declaring that she was “a fighter not a quitter”.
“Given the situation, I cannot carry out the mandate for which I was elected…I will remain as Prime Minister until a successor has been chosen,” the outgoing PM said in her short media address announcing her resignation.
(With inputs from agencies)
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