Liz Truss serves record low time in office

Britain’s Prime Minister, Mary Elizabeth Truss, resigned on Thursday after 44 days in the position, making her the Prime Minister to hold the title for the shortest amount of time. Truss replaced Boris Johnson in September, who resigned due to concerns about his ethics in office. 

Truss’ six weeks in office saw tax cuts across the board, but those lasted even shorter than Truss herself. Now, the UK’s economy is in shambles, with the value of the pound plummeting and mortgages skyrocketing.

“Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine threatens the security of our whole continent, and our country had been held back for too long by low economic growth,” said Truss in her resignation speech. “I was elected by the Conservative Party with a mandate to change this. We delivered on energy bills and on cutting national insurance, and we set out a vision for a low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit. I recognize, though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.”

An election for the next Prime Minister of Britain is set to take place next week, with frontrunners being former chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, and leader of the lower house of Parliament, Penny Mordaunt. Speculation about Boris Johnson running again has also been rampant.

This sudden change of power is indicative of the current state of the conservative party in Britain. Truss is the 4th Prime Minister to resign since Brexit in 2016, and it is becoming increasingly clear that Britain doesn’t know what it’s doing.

So why does this matter to us?

If Boris Johnson assumes office, tensions between the US and the UK will almost certainly rise, because of Biden’s dislike for Johnson. Of course, that is just theoretical, but what this debacle actually tells us is that the political situation in the United States may be even more uneasy.

Most of the British being united against Truss is in sharp contrast to the US, where in recent years, the political parties have never really agreed on anything. The polarizing politicians we have seen in office have never lost all of their supporters, no matter what they did. For example, Trump’s approval rate never dropped below 35 percent, while all of Britain agreed that Truss needed to go.

If the United States can’t agree on anything, any progress the country makes will not happen without opposition, and politicians can’t really be shamed out of doing something anymore. Because they know they have diehard supporters, public approval doesn’t mean all that much to them, so they do what they want to do, not what is best for the country.

While Truss will be out of office soon, the country will not have an easy recovery from her time in office. With an election next week, Britain stands on a precipice, with the future of the country is on the line.