The UK Could Be on the Way to Its Third Prime Minister in 3 Months

The U.K. government appears to be in complete chaos. After Boris Johnson was forced to resign by his parliamentary colleagues in early July, the new prime minister, chosen by just 140,000 Conservative Party members, is on the ropes. She has fired her hapless chancellor and the public is revolting against her party.

Since Brexit, the Conservative Party has had four leaders in quick succession: David Cameron, who made the losing bet that the “remain in Europe” side of the Brexit referendum would easily win; Theresa May; Boris Johnson and now Liz Truss. The Conservative Party has never had so many prime minsters in quick succession since the early 1960s and the late 1950s.

Truss remains in control as of Friday, even though her government is looking increasingly dysfunctional by the minute. It’s entirely possible that enough of her members of Parliament (MPs) will revolt that she will have to announce a timeline for either leaving office or calling a general election.

In late September, Prime Minister Liz Truss — fresh off her victory in the Conservative Party’s internal leadership contest to replace disgraced Prime Minister Boris Johnson — and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, unveiled a sweeping, unfunded and inflation-fueling tax cut package. It promptly sent the U.K. financial markets and currency into a swan-dive and triggered a series of expensive emergency interventions by the Bank of England to keep the economy — and more specifically, the private pension system and mortgage market — afloat. Despite the chaos Truss, Kwarteng and others doubled down. They declared that the tax cuts were only the start of a huge program to downsize government and kickstart the slow economy. In response, large numbers of Conservative MPs made it clear they would vote down their government’s own economic program, and rumblings began in Parliament that Truss’s premiership was doomed.

The Economist magazine — hardly known for its firebrand left-wing rhetoric– lambasted Truss for having squandered her credibility within a week of taking office. The magazine pointed out that this was the case. “the shelf life of a lettuce.”

A few days later, the initial panic in the market was over. public support for the Conservative Party had collapsed and economic hard-hitters from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to Larry Summers were piling onto the U.K. government’s economic plans. Kwarteng was forced into a reversal and reinstated the top income tax rate for the richest 1 percent, which he had dropped with such fanfare just a few days before. It seemed like an amateur evening in the halls and offices of power in London. Truss, though, reiterated that she had a Downing Street office. full confidence in Kwarteng.

A day later, Truss and Kwarteng were on a visit to a Birmingham construction site. Truss, wearing a hardhat, was twice asked by journalists if she had confidence in her chancellor. However, she was more ambivalent this second time. Twice, she ducked the question and refused to say whether she still had faith in Kwarteng. It seems that twenty-four hours is a very long time these days in British politics.

Kwarteng had to fly back to London in order to meet Truss ten days later, as the financial panic in the U.K. was showing no signs of abating. It was clear by then that the cutting of corporate taxes, another centerpiece of Kwarteng’s ill-fated “mini-budget,” would also have to be reversed.

She had only 38 days to go before she was appointed Kwarteng on Friday morning Truss had fired the chancellorIn whom she had expressed so much confidence earlier in this month. In the long annals of British political history, it’s hard to find another example of a chancellor — essentially the second-most important political figure in the country after the prime minister — with such a short and dismal tenure.

In fact only one other modern-day chancellor, Iain Macleod, has had a shorter term in office,His excuse at least seems to be somewhat more convincing. He wasn’t forced out by the sheer ineptitude and economy-crashing consequences of his actions. He died on July 20, 1970, one month after Prime Minister Edward Heath had hired him. To be fair, there are also three others, all from the early 19th century, who managed to serve even less time than did Kwarteng, but one wasn’t even a permanent chancellor: 188 years ago, Baron Denman eked out a month in office — but Denman wasn’t really the chancellor; he was only ever intended as a placeholder, announced as an interim chancellor appointed in a rush by incoming Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel until he could find a more permanent figure for the job.

In the wake of Truss’s firing of Kwarteng — who was made to take the fall for policies that were signed off on and, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, promoted as tonics to the U.K.’s financial system by Truss herself — the sense of political crisis has only intensified. The Financial Times, perhaps the ultimate paper of record in the U.K., ran an opinion piece on Friday afternoon titled “Truss becomes a zombie prime minister in record time.

A rather loud whispering campaign has already begun in which Conservative MPs tell journalists that Truss “cannot survive.” Increasingly, there is talk of changing internal Conservative Party rules to allow for another leadership contest just months after the one that toppled Johnson. Rumours are circulating in Britain’s press that Truss could be a candidate for the presidency. a group of “senior” MPs are about to publicly call on Truss to step down.

There’s something almost macabre about the Truss premiership. If I were superstitious, I’d say she was cursed. Everything she touches turns bad. Truss went north to Scotland on September 6th to be asked by Queen Elizabeth for a formal invitation to form a new government. Two days later, the queen died. She tried to channel Margaret Thatcher by taking a hatchet to regulations and taxes, but the markets quickly gave her the death sentence. Bronx cheer. Kwarteng was assured her complete confidence and she had to fire him.

Truss made a brief statement describing her ambitions on the day she was elected prime minister. She was, she averred, “confident that together we can: Ride out the storm, we can rebuild our economy, and we can become the modern brilliant Britain that I know we can be.” Six weeks later, Truss’s ability to ride out her own personal storm looks, to say the least, rather dubious. Britain, long known for its stability in its political institutions, could be on its way to its third prime minster in as many months.