Coup, assassination, abdication, suicide and illness – all have contributed to history’s shortest serving leaderships though none, in the literal sense at least, can be said to apply to Liz Truss.
But at just 45 days, she faces the ignominy of being the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister by some degree. The announcement of fer resination, made by Truss outside Downing Street, follows the near-complete evaporation of her political authority which has seen her crash the markets, get publicly rebuked by the IMF, lose two key ministers and shed the confidence of almost all her own MPs. Truss’s resignation will set another unwanted record, by making her the first prime minister in recent history not to call the UK’s devolved leaders at any point while in office.
Keir Starmer said: “After 12 years of Tory failure, the British people deserve so much better than this revolving door of chaos. In the last few years, the Tories have set record-high taxation, trashed our institutions and created a cost-of-living crisis. […] The damage they have done will take years to fix.”
Purchased at a Tesco grocery store for 60 pence, the lettuce became a caricature of the Conservative leader’s flailing hold on power, pitted against the prime minister by The Daily Star. “Will Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?” the newspaper asked in a live video that has been running since Oct. 14, attracting bounds of viewers and comments on social media. The lettuce gag was inspired by The Economist, which noted on Oct. 11 that between a near-immediate political implosion at the beginning of her tenure and the 10 days of mourning after Queen Elizabeth II died, her grip on power amounted to seven days, or “roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.” In the end, the lettuce emerged victorious after Truss resigned.