British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced on Thursday she was stepping down, just over six weeks after taking the Conservative Party reins as leader.
Truss’s short tenure was marked by shock over the government’s mini-budget, which roiled British markets, and internal party dissension leading to cabinet departures and backbenchers expressing a lack of confidence in their new leader.
Truss said that, “given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.”
Another Conservative leadership contest will take place within a week, Truss said in a short statement outside the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street. She will stay on until then.
It will be the fourth such contest for the party since David Cameron stepped down in the wake of a referendum that saw British voters support an exit from the European Union.
‘A shambles and a disgrace’
The development came just a day after Truss expressed her desire to stay on after apologizing for the tumultuous start to her leadership, saying she was “a fighter and not a quitter.”
Kwasi Kwarteng, the government’s finance minister, resigned last week after his so-called mini-budget announcement of Sept. 23 roiled the markets for its level of government borrowing during a time of economic uncertainty. It also angered opposition parties for its tax breaks for the very wealthiest.
Jeremy Hunt replaced Kwarteng and on Monday pledged to scrap most of that mini-budget, which originally had Truss’s full-throated support.
Interior minister Suella Braverman left cabinet Wednesday after a rules breach, but in her departing letter expressed “concerns about the direction of this government.”
“The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes,” Braverman wrote.
An effort by Truss supporters to shore up her standing ahead of a fracking vote on Wednesday was seen by some MPs as heavy-handed and exacerbated the government’s crisis, some MPs said.
Conservative lawmaker Charles Walker told the BBC 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.”
Leadership roulette
Since Cameron’s announcement, Britain has seen three prime ministers installed before the greater public had a chance to weigh in: Truss, Johnson and Theresa May.
May would eventually win a closer-than-expected election in 2017 over Jeremy Corbyn, but paid the price for protracted negotiations with the EU over the Brexit departure. The strong-willed Johnson helped deliver Brexit and earned an overwhelming mandate with a late 2019 election rout that led to Corbyn’s removal as Labour leader.
But Johnson’s disorganized governing style and allegations of pandemic rule-breaking whittled away his internal support within the party until he was forced to step aside earlier this year.
Front Burner from Oct. 11:
Front Burner30:52Britain: Rough month or road to ruin?
In her first month as leader of the ruling Conservatives, U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss plunged the British economy into chaos. A major tax cutting plan for top earners and corporations — meant to stimulate the economy as energy costs soar — terrified financial markets so deeply, it sent interest rates skyrocketing, drove the pound into the ground, and required an urgent intervention from the Bank of England. Truss changed course, and the economy is back from the brink, but Britain’s fragile state post-Brexit begs the question: Is the U.K. ok? Today on Front Burner, Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London and the author of the upcoming book The Conservative Party after Brexit, gives a rundown of Britain’s recent turbulence and the turning points that lead to this moment.
Truss won the resultant summer leadership race to succeed him over finalist Rishi Sunak, though a majority of party MPs and grandees supported Sunak, the one-time finance minister under Johnson. Grassroots party members favoured Truss to a significant degree.
Opposition Leader Keir Starmer of the Labour Party called for Truss’s resignation this week and demanded an immediate election so the British public could help determine the path forward as the country confronts a number of issues, including the highest inflation rate since the early 1980s.