Loss of trust for Liz Truss

WASHINGTON: A month and a half after Liz Truss took charge as the British Prime Minister, the Tory leader tendered her resignation last week, bringing an end to a messy premiership marked by humiliating policy reversals. She now has the distinction of being the shortest-serving PM in British history.

The previous record was held by George Canning who served 119 days in 1827. While making way for her replacement, the ex-chancellor Rishi Sunak, who was appointed as the new PM this week, Truss struck a defiant note in her farewell speech.

Defending her choices to cut taxes to shed Britain’s status as a low-growth nation, she urged her successor to remain bold.

Having said that, Truss’s hubris was the result of an economic programme that sent shockwaves through the financial markets in September and left members of her Conservative Party split right down the middle. Her downfall seemed almost inevitable as earlier last week, Indian origin British MP Suella Braverman, who found herself in a soup over her unflattering remarks on migrants from India, resigned as home secretary.

Braverman’s departure followed close on the heels of the dismissal of Kwasi Kwarteng, the former chancellor — by Truss.

Kwarteng’s mini budget of tax cuts brought into effect on September 23 had led to the crash of the pound, the cost of government borrowing to surge and set off turbulence in the bond market.

The loss of two occupants of the four major offices of the state in a period of six days was indicative of Truss’ poor judgement vis-a-vis running a tight crew.

Truss’s fall from grace was accelerated by the ill-informed fiscal plan unveiled in September. The unfunded tax cuts for the well-heeled, reminiscent of Thatcherian measures, had caused the interest rates to soar and the pound to plunge.

This compelled the administration to fly into damage control mode, appointing Jeremy Hunt as chancellor, who in turn reversed the unpopular tax cuts, and subsequently formed a new advisory council. He was tasked with finding billions of pounds in spending cuts in an attempt to placate investors and rebuild the nation’s fiscal reputation even as its economy slid into recession and with a 40-year high inflation.

Former PM Boris Johnson’s shadow had also loomed large on Truss’s prime ministerial stint. His meteoric triumph in the 2019 election where he blazed past with 14 mn votes, while championing Britain’s speedy action on Brexit was only offset by Truss’s monumental undoing.

Like Johnson, her leadership piggybacked on populist sentiments as opposed to fiscal prudence, and the results are there for all to see. While the Conservatives have stayed in power for over a decade in Britain now, the country now has its fifth PM in six years.

Obviously, things aren’t going as per plan for Britain, which has been battered by the impact of Brexit, the pandemic, post-truth and extremism.

All these developments had spelt bad news for Truss against whom letters of no-confidence had piled up. It had also prompted Conservative lawmakers to breach the subject of modifying the leadership rules, by foregoing the one year grace period that Truss was entitled to, and dropping her much before that.

For Britain, the lessons from such debacles must not be lost. The nation hopes that Truss’s successor is a leader whose primary focus is the welfare of the nation.