It all ended before it started properly. UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’ 45 days of tumultuous tenure ended on Thursday with her abrupt resignation. That’s the shortest term for a British Prime Minister. While putting in her papers, the beleaguered Prime Minister stated that she recognises she “cannot deliver the mandate” on which she was elected.
“I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party,” Liz Truss said. “I will remain as prime minister until a successor has been chosen. Thank you,” Truss added.
“I came into office at a time of great economic and international instability. Families and businesses were worried about how to pay their bills, Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine threatens the security of our whole continent and our country has been held back for too long by low economic growth,” Truss said on Thursday.
Candidates to replace her are likely to include former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. Other contenders could include Penny Mordaunt, Grant Shapps and Kemi Badenoch.
The very brief premiership of Truss was marked by a series of untoward events ranging from ministerial resignations to a huge market meltdown which the Prime Minister found hard to handle. Truss’ woes began when her showpiece tax-slashing policy sparked market chaos that threatened the country’s pension funds, forcing her into a series of humiliating U-turns. The government’s tax-cutting plans caused a market meltdown during an already severe cost-of-living crisis.
On 23 September in a ‘mini-budget’, the UK Finance Minister announced the biggest tax cuts in 50 years and said that the government needed a “new approach for a new era, focused on growth.” The UK Treasury said that the tax cuts, including the slash of the top rate of income tax to 40 per cent from 45 per cent, reductions in duties paid on house purchases, and the cancellation of a planned hike in business taxes, would wipe 45 billion Euros off government revenues over the next five years, according to CNN.
Amid the widespread criticism for the massive tax cuts, Truss fired her Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng. That was a huge blow to the Truss government as Kwarteng was much more than a colleague to the Prime Minister. The two had become the darlings of the low-tax, free-market Conservative right who saw the resignation of Boris Johnson as a chance to finally install the libertarian, the de-regulating government of their dreams, reported CNN.
This followed another ministerial resignation of India-origin Home Secretary Suella Braverman who was forced to leave as UK home secretary. Braverman was sacked by the Prime Minister because she sent an official document from her personal email to a fellow MP, in a serious breach of ministerial rules.
