The government of Britain‘s Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss appears to be imploding, with her resignation possible even before the weekend. The crisis at Truss’s No. 10 Downing Street residence office represents a stunning collapse of authority. As of Wednesday, the prime minister has held her office for just 43 days.
The first shock on Wednesday came when Home Secretary Suella Braverman resigned. She did so after breaching the ministerial code by — hello, Hillary Clinton — sending a document via her personal email account. Braverman not-so-subtly lashed out at Truss in her resignation letter, saying that good leaders accept “responsibility for their mistake.”
But if Braverman was the early story, what drove the evening crisis in London’s Westminster political district was the government’s handling of a vote on fracking. A ban was supported by the Labour Party opposition and opposed by the government. However, while Truss won the vote, numerous Conservative parliamentarians say there were profanity-laden exchanges in the voting lobbies before the vote. Conservative ministers and whips apparently attempted to force their backbench parliamentary colleagues to vote for the government. The government began Wednesday claiming that the fracking vote was a confidence vote in its authority (a “vote for us or get expelled” vote) before later abandoning that stance. Following the vote, Truss’s chief whip resigned.
This chaos follows equally stunning events over the past two weeks.
Entering office with plans for massive tax cuts but not commensurate spending cuts, Truss quickly came under immense pressure from her backbenches and the financial markets. The costs of borrowing spiked, sparking public suffering, concern, and a loss of confidence in Britain’s reliability as a global financial powerhouse. Truss was forced to fire her chancellor (Britain’s more powerful version of treasury secretary) and abandon most of her plans. In another major shift, the new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has suggested that significant spending cuts are coming.
Still, the primary architect of this malaise appears to be Truss herself. Although popular with party members for her unapologetic right-wing credentials, Truss lacks easy charisma in television interviews and behind-the-scenes parliamentary dealings. This weighs Truss with a negative contrast to the rambunctious charisma of her predecessor Boris Johnson and the stoic appeal of his predecessor Theresa May. Misjudging the appetite of Conservative parliamentarians and the markets for her right-wing reforms, May has instead relied on ideological loyalists to enforce her will. As of Wednesday, this has only further alienated the backbenches, which look at the opinion polls and see their careers threatened with annihilation in face of the Labour Party’s now stunning 20-30 point polling lead.
Considering the possibility of further ministerial resignations and negative financial market reactions on Thursday, it’s unclear how Truss’s short-lived premiership can expect to survive much longer.
