Down and out

LIZ TRUSS came, she saw, she left.

As British political biographies go, such a brief encapsulation of a prime ministerial tenure is unusual. This is the country of historical figures such as Sir Robert Walpole and William Gladstone, who served for decades.

When she assumed office, Ms Truss invoked the legacy of Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister. Mrs Thatcher famously held office for almost 12 years, becoming the longest-serving British prime minister in recent times.

In the end, all Ms Truss could manage was a few weeks.

And much of that was borrowed time. Ms Truss’s entry into 10 Downing Street came as Britain entered a period of mourning for a very different Liz: Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning British monarch. With cost-of-living and energy crises looming, that period of mourning was arguably a honeymoon period for the new premier.

It turns out it was a buffer shielding the British people longer yet from the damaging effects of Ms Truss’s fantasy economics.

With her disastrous “mini budget,” Ms Truss sought to roll back the clock and take the UK back to the Thatcher era, privileging an extreme neoliberal model of a shrunken state and a more powerful (and wealthy) private sector.

Growth, growth, growth, she bellowed.

Leave, leave, leave was the reply of the very market she wished to venerate above all.

The pound crashed. Mortgages were pulled. The UK Central Bank was forced to intervene. All this was due to an uncosted programme of tax cuts which had not been shown to the offices of state in charge of ensuring fiscal responsibility.

None of it came out of the blue. Ms Truss had campaigned on the promise of such a programme all summer.

Her main rival for Conservative party leadership, Rishi Sunak, warned it would not work. He was ignored. Ms Truss was chosen by the party rank and file.

Tin-eared, tone-deaf, out of touch, incompetent, illegal – all arguably par for the course, given recent standards in British politics.

But the bedlam this week astonished even the most cynical. Government members were reportedly “physically manhandled,” in a parliamentary vote on fracking which was seen as a confidence vote – until it was not. Tory whips resigned, then unresigned.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman quit after what has been described as a shouting match. Like Ms Truss, Ms Braverman enters the record books, but as the shortest-serving home secretary.

But Ms Truss’s exit will not cauterise the wound. More chaos and instability lie ahead.

This country, whose ministers often cite UK government policy – no matter how backward – as a model for their own plans, should take note.

Meanwhile, the title of a forthcoming (or, now, perhaps not) biography of Ms Truss, Out of the Blue, should perhaps be changed to simply one word: Out.