Anarchy in the UK as Truss bows out
LoNdoN: Britain’s ruling Conservative Party is scrambling to find a new prime minister – one who isn’t Boris Johnson – and resurrect both the dire economy and the party’s election hopes.
Liz Truss on Thursday (UK time) announced her resignation, just 44 crisisfilled days after taking office.
The new leader will be elected on October 28, party managers said, setting a high bar of 100 nominations for candidates to amass from fellow MPs. That appears to have been designed to block a comeback by Mr Johnson.
The race will be effectively limited to three candidates at the start, before the 357 Tory MPs vote on their preferred candidate on Monday.
Party members will then get an online vote, in an accelerated timetable that avoids the drawn-out contest in which Ms Truss defeated Rishi Sunak over the summer after Mr Johnson resigned.
In her farewell remarks, Ms Truss admitted she “cannot deliver the mandate” on which she was elected by the members, after her right-wing platform of tax cuts disintegrated and many Conservative MPs revolted.
Labour leader Keir Starmer, whose opposition party has surged in polls on the back of Ms Truss’s short and disastrous tenure, demanded a general election “now”.
Speaking outside 10 Downing Street, Ms Truss said she would stay on as
Prime Minister until a successor was chosen.
“This will ensure that we remain on a path to deliver our fiscal plan and maintain our country’s economic stability and national security,” she said, after senior backbench MP Sir Graham Brady told her the game was up.
The incoming leader will be in place in time for new finance minister Jeremy Hunt to deliver a crucial budget statement on October 31.
Mr Hunt has already thrown out nearly all of Ms Truss’s debt-fuelled tax promises, which Mr Sunak had warned would bring about higher inflation and market turmoil. His warnings were vindicated, and the former chancellor quickly
emerged as the bookmakers’ favourite. But he remains held in deep suspicion by Johnson loyalists.
Mr Johnson himself was eyeing a comeback, despite remaining deeply unpopular with a large section of Tory MPs and the electorate for the many scandals that brought him down.
“Time to come back – few issues at the office that need addressing,” Trade Minister James Duddridge, Mr Johnson’s former parliamentary aide, tweeted with the hashtag #BringbackBoris.
Another potential runner is centrist cabinet member Penny Mordaunt, who narrowly failed to make the Truss-Sunak runoff.
The end for Ms Truss
came after a key minister resigned and many Tory MPs rebelled over an important vote in chaotic scenes at the House of Commons late on Wednesday, local time.
By Thursday morning, more than a dozen Conservative MPs had publicly urged Ms Truss to resign.
“The Prime Minister acknowledged yesterday was a difficult day and she recognises the public wanted to see the government focusing less on politics and more on delivering their priorities,” her spokesman told reporters.
Barely two hours later, she quit, and will fall well short of her Tory predecessor George Canning, who served 118 days as prime minister in 1827 before dying in office.