Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

When she took the keys to 10 Downing Street in the wake of Boris Johnson’s political demise, Liz Truss promised to “ride out the storm” of Britain’s economic crisis. But she was soon engulfed by a hurricane of her own making.

It was a humiliating end to a calamitous premiership marked by failed economic policies and a deeply divided ruling party.

Here are the lowlights of Truss’ term as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister.

Sept. 5: Truss takes over — Truss is declared the winner of the Conservative Party leadership contest after her predecessor, Boris Johnson, is forced to step down following a series of ethics scandals. The omens aren’t good. The country is facing a bruised economy, a spiraling cost of living crisis and a crumbling healthcare service. Truss, who served as foreign secretary in Johnson’s government, also faces huge diplomatic challenges in the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Sept. 8: Queen Elizabeth II dies — Days into Truss’ premiership Queen Elizabeth II dies at the age of 96, sending the country into a period of national mourning. Truss pays tribute to the Queen as a symbol of stability who ruled through crises, tragedies, political scandals, pandemic and recessions. The period of mourning gives Truss a breathing space after a marathon leadership campaign that lasted most of the summer.

Sept. 23: A disastrous "mini budget" — In her first big move as prime minister, Truss' Chancellor of the Exchequer (the UK finance minister) and closest friend in politics, Kwasi Kwarteng, unveils a sweeping plan to extricate the country from recession, which includes a swath of tax cuts that will be funded by higher government borrowing. The plan’s a huge gamble — the biggest tax cuts in 50 years — without a clear plan on how to pay for them. Usually, big fiscal statements in the UK are audited independently by the Office for Budget Responsibility. But Kwarteng says there was no time for such an audit — a move that stuns financial markets and sends the pound plunging. Bond prices subsequently collapse, sending borrowing costs soaring, sparking mayhem in the mortgage market and pushing pension funds to the brink of insolvency.

Oct. 14: Truss fires Kwarteng — The economic turmoil and the prospect of higher mortgage rates force Truss to walk back key components of her financial plan. After ditching her plan to slash the highest rate of income tax, she fires Kwarteng in a desperate attempt to salvage her position. In a letter posted on Twitter, Kwarteng says he agreed to step down at Truss’ behest. Truss appoints former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt as Kwarteng’s replacement, making him Britain’s fourth finance minister in just over three months.

Oct. 17: Hunt ditches Truss' fiscal plan —Just three days into the job, Hunt says he will scrap “almost all” tax measures announced by his predecessor in an effort to calm spooked markets and restore the government’s credibility. A proposed cut to the basic rate of income tax from April 2023 is postponed “indefinitely.” And while the government says it will still guarantee energy prices for households and businesses through this winter, it won’t commit to capping prices beyond next spring. The moves amount to a gutting of Truss’ flagship “growth plan” and leave her in a perilous political position. While investors show support for Hunt’s new plan, the opposition Labour Party is not appeased.

Oct. 19: Key ally quits cabinet —Home Secretary Suella Braverman announces her departure from Truss’ Cabinet, as claims emerge of chaos and “bullying” during a parliamentary vote the same day. Braverman says she stepped down as Home Secretary over the use of a personal email address that violated ministerial rules, but also launches a thinly veiled criticism of Truss’ leadership in her resignation letter. Allegations also emerge of some ruling Conservative Party lawmakers being physically dragged to vote with the government against the ban on fracking for shale gas. Politicians later share accounts on Twitter of angry scenes of shouting and altercation in parliament.

Oct. 20: Truss resigns — After a chaotic six-week spell in Downing Street, Truss announces her resignation. “I recognize though given the situation I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” she says. Truss says she has tendered her resignation to the King, and a leadership election will take place within a week. She will remain UK prime minister until her successor is chosen. Her swift exit as prime minister prompts calls for an early general election in Britain. But a fresh election is no certainty before 2025, even as Britain prepares for its fifth leader in just over six years – and its third since the last ballot.

CNN’s Rob Picheta, Tara John, Bianca Nobilo, Luke McGee, Stephen Collinson and Julia Horowitz contributed reporting.

With her resignation on Thursday, Liz Truss is now the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. She was six weeks into a disastrous term that pitched Britain deep into political and economic turmoil.

Only eight prime ministers have served for less than a year.

Truss' successor will be the third prime minister since the country last had a general election. 

Boris Johnson, the previous prime minister, resigned in July 2020, triggering a Conservative Party leadership contest but not a general election. 

Truss won that leadership contest and became prime minister on Sept. 6, 2022. 

The Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin hopes that stability will be brought to British politics in light of the "critical issue" of Northern Ireland.

Speaking to journalists on his way into a European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday, Martin said he sympathized with Truss calling it a "very difficult time for the British prime minister given all that has happened.”

"What's important as Britain's nearest neighbor, we have significant economic relationship and many other relationships with the United Kingdom, I think stability is very important," Martin said. 

Martin highlighted "the critical issue" taking place in Northern Ireland which has been without a government since early May after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) refused to form a government with the Nationalist Sinn Féin party. If a government is not formed by Oct. 28, the Northern Ireland secretary of state is bound to call an election in the region. 

"There is an urgent need for engagement as well with the British government and the new prime minister in relation to Northern Ireland and ensuring stability," Martin stressed. 

This also comes as officials from the UK and EU attempt to find solutions to the contentious Northern Ireland Protocol which forms of part of the Brexit agreement. 

Despite the challenges, Martin said he believed it was "within the capacity of the British political system to settle this," adding that he looked "forward to engaging with the new prime minister."

Candidates to replace Liz Truss as Tory leader will need at least 100 nominations from British Conservative MPs, Sir Graham Brady, a former committee chair and parliament member, has said. 

Requiring 100 signatures to proceed in the race effectively narrows the field of potential candidates. Brady said the threshold allows for the possibility of three candidates at most. 

In the event, only one candidate emerges, there could be a new party leader and Prime Minister by Monday, Tory Conservative Party chairman Jake Berry added. Berry said there would be an online vote for members if two candidates made it through the parliamentary stages.

Former UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said Liz Truss was right to stand down as leader of the country, in order to provide a “roadmap for an orderly transition.”

“MPs must now be prepared to compromise. It is our duty to provide sensible, competent government at this critical moment for our country,” she said on twitter.

 

The record-breaking brevity of Liz Truss's catastrophic stint as prime minister is perhaps best encapsulated by her defeat in a much-publicized contest with Britain's most famous lettuce.

The Daily Star tabloid posed an unexpected question last Friday, after Truss sacked her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and U-turned on her disastrous mini-budget, seemingly putting her premiership on course for a collision with an iceberg.

“Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?” the paper asked.

To test the theory it set up a live stream showing a 24/7 view of a lettuce alongside a picture of Truss, which quickly went viral.

And, on Thursday, thousands flocked to the video to watch the lettuce celebrate its astonishing victory.

"I can't believe the lettuce won," Labour MP Afzal Khan wrote on Twitter. "The lettuce wins with time to spare!" added SNP lawmaker Owen Thompson.

Though the lettuce showed signs of browning during the six-day contest, it appears healthy enough to have held off Truss's challenge for a further few days if necessary.

London's Mayor Sadiq Khan has told CNN the UK has become "a laughing stock" due to the ongoing chaos at the heart of government.

"I’m not somebody who’s easily surprised or easily shocked, but I’m surprised and shocked that just a few weeks after Liz Truss became the Conservative leader and the British prime minister we have the chaos we’ve seen over the last few days and weeks, leading to her resigning today," Khan told Christiane Amanpour.

"What we don’t want is yet another internal Conservative leadership contest," Khan said.

"What we need is for Liz Truss or whoever Conservative members choose to be the next leader to give the British public the opportunity of voting for a fresh start."

WATCH:

“The Prime Minister is not under a desk.”

It said much about the state of Liz Truss’s troubled premiership that this statement by fellow Conservative minister Penny Mordaunt at the start of the week was made, ostensibly at least, as a show of support.

Three days later, on Thursday, Truss announced her resignation.

Hard to believe it is less than six weeks since Truss descended a helicopter to “kiss hands” with Queen Elizabeth II (two days before the latter’s death in Balmoral Castle, Scotland), becoming the United Kingdom’s 56th prime minister.

As she surveys the shattered wreck of her premiership, Truss must be wondering where it all went wrong – and quite how it collapsed around her ears so quickly.

To recap: as the country observed 10 days official mourning for the late Queen, Truss and her close ally and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng drew up plans for a financial package dubbed the “mini-Budget” but with consequences which would feel decidedly maxi.

Truss and Kwarteng’s prescription for turbo-powering the economy in a quest for growth through unfunded tax cuts unnerved the markets, triggering a run on the pound and forcing the Bank of England to step in to prevent pension funds collapsing.

Last week, Truss hoicked Kwarteng back from Washington DC, where he was attending a gathering of the IMF, to fire him for, as critics quipped, following her policies to the letter. In his stead, she installed as Chancellor the experienced Jeremy Hunt, a candidate from the opposite moderate wing of the party, but who trailed in eighth place behind her in the contest to replace Boris Johnson last summer.

On Monday, Hunt took steps to steady the markets by jettisoning the entire mini-Budget, including a planned 1p cut in income tax, a corporation tax rise and VAT-free shopping for tourists (Truss and Kwarteng had already been forced to ditch plans to scrap the top 45p tax rate).

That left Truss’s low-tax economic vision in tatters, a boil lanced not only for the short term but, to the fury of those who had been in her camp, leaving sufficient scar tissue to warn politicians off repeating the experiment for a generation.

Rosa Prince is editor of The House magazine. She is former assistant political editor of the Daily Telegraph and author of the books “Theresa May: The Enigmatic Prime Minister” “and “Comrade Corbyn: A Very Unlikely Coup.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

US President Joe Biden thanked British Prime Minister Liz Truss "for her partnership on a range of issues" in a statement Thursday following her resignation, and he pledged that the close relationship between the US and UK "will never change." 

"The United States and the United Kingdom are strong Allies and enduring friends — and that fact will never change," Biden said in a statement Thursday. "I thank Prime Minister Liz Truss for her partnership on a range of issues including holding Russia accountable for its war against Ukraine." 

Biden said the US would continue its "close cooperation with the U.K. government as we work together to meet the global challenges our nations face."

He was later asked whether her resignation was the right move.

“That’s for her to decide, but look she was a good partner on Russia and Ukraine. And the British are going to solve their problem. But she was a good partner,” he told reporters. 

He dismissed that there could be potential spillover effects from the UK's economic and political turmoil on the US economy. "No, I don't think they're that consequential."