Liz Truss resigns as UK PM. AP
New Delhi: UK PM Liz Truss resigned on Thursday after only 45 days in office. She has become the shortest-serving PM in British history. The ruling Conservative Party is expected to choose her successor by the end of next week.
Her decision to step down comes after a tumultuous six-week term in which her policies triggered turmoil in financial markets and a rebellion in her party undermined her authority.
She said “I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected.”
Just a day earlier Truss had vowed to stay in power, saying she was “a fighter and not a quitter.” But Truss couldn’t hold on any longer after a senior minister quit her government with a barrage of criticism and a vote in the House of Commons descended into chaos and acrimony just days after she was forced to abandon many of her economic policies.
Truss quit after a meeting with Graham Brady, a senior Conservative lawmaker who oversees leadership challenges. Brady was tasked with assessing whether the prime minister still has the support of Tory members of Parliament — and it seemed she did not.
Her departure leaves a divided Conservative Party seeking a leader who can unify its warring factions. Whoever will replace Truss will become the country’s third prime minister this year alone. A general election is scheduled to be held in 2024.
Home Secretary Braverman’s resignation hastened Truss’ downfall
Truss’ downfall was hastened by the resignation on Wednesday of Home Secretary Suella Braverman. She quit after breaching rules by sending an official document from her personal email account. She used her resignation letter to lambaste Truss, saying she had “concerns about the direction of this government.”
“The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes,” she said in a thinly veiled dig at Truss.
Braverman was replaced as home secretary, the minister responsible for immigration and law and order, by former Cabinet minister Grant Shapps, a high-profile supporter of her defeated rival Sunak.
The dramatic developments came days after Truss fired her Treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday after the economic package the pair unveiled 23 September spooked financial markets and triggered an economic and political crisis.
The plan’s 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in unfunded tax cuts sparked turmoil in financial markets, hammering the value of the pound and increasing the cost of U.K. government borrowing. The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent the crisis from spreading to the wider economy and putting pension funds at risk.
On Monday Kwarteng’s replacement, Hunt, scrapped almost all of Truss’ tax cuts, along with her flagship energy policy and her promise of no public spending cuts. He said the government will need to save billions of pounds and there are “many difficult decisions” to be made before he sets out a medium-term fiscal plan on 31 October.
Speaking to lawmakers for the first time since the U-turn, Truss apologised Wednesday and admitted she had made mistakes during her six weeks in office, but insisted that by changing course she had “taken responsibility and made the right decisions in the interest of the country’s economic stability.”
Meanwhile, the frontrunners to replace Truss include her predecessor Boris Johnson, and Rishi Sunak who lost the leadership race to her last month.
With inputs from AP
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