Picture by Michael Garnett on Flickr
Today, Liz Truss has resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Her run lasted for 45 days, making her the shortest serving leader in UK history. She has witnessed the death of the Queen and faced troubles with trying to combat the cost-of-living crisis. This feature will look back at her time in 10 Downing Street.
On 5 September 2022, Liz Truss beat the likes of Rishi Sunak, Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt and many more Conservative MPs to become the Prime Minister. She took over Boris Johnson, who’s run lasted for three years ending in July. Before this, Liz Truss was the President of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats supporting the legalisation of cannabis, abolishing the monarchy and was against the Criminal Order and Justice Order Act 1994. Two years later, in 1996, Truss joined the Conservative Party.
Truss won the Southwest Norfolk seat in the 2010 general election, a seat she has held ever since. Over the next few years, she went from being a Junior Minister in the Department of Education in 2012, becoming the Environment Secretary in a cabinet re-shuffle in 2014, appointed as Justice Secretary and becoming the first Female Chancellor under Theresa May in 2016.
Truss moved to the position of Chief Secretary to the Treasury a year later and was infamous for her posts on Twitter and Instagram. Boris Johnson became the Prime Minister in 2019 and promoted Truss into the role of the Secretary of State for International Trade. Another reshuffle occurred in September 2021 and she was promoted as Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs.
Truss’s first day as Prime Minister was 6 September. Unfortunately, Queen Elizabeth II died in Balmoral two days later and Truss subsequently led the UK in remembering the monarch’s reign until her Funeral on 19 September 2022.
Truss’ cabinet was appointed on her first week. This included Theresa Coffey as Deputy Prime Minister and Health Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor, James Cleverley as Foreign Secretary, Suella Braverman as Home Secretary and many more who joined the cabinet.
As her first action as Prime Minister, Liz Truss announced a two-year gap on the price per unit for domestic energy supplies under the named Energy Price Guarantee. This action gained lukewarm reviews from both sides of the spectrum. However, her first topple occurred on the 23 September when Kwasi Kwarteng announced a mini budget that would cut taxations. While this sounded like a promising proposal, it led to the Bank of England taking over after the value of the British Pound fell.
Liz’s defence on the mini budget failed and asked Kwarteng to reverse the mini budget and after 38 days as Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng was replaced by Jeremy Hunt. The only act Hunt did as Chancellor was reducing the Energy Price Guarantee from two years to six months.
Kwasi’s resignation was not the only blow for Liz. On the 19 October, Suella Braverman left her role as Home Secretary after she shared official documents from her personal email address with a fellow colleague in Parliament, breaching the Ministerial Code. Braverman had wanted to revisit the Rwanda plans to tackle immigration and planned to introduce bills banning protests leading to vandalism.
All of this led to Liz Truss resigning as Prime Minister on the 20 October. Her resignation makes her the shortest serving Prime Minister in UK history after 45 days in charge, beating George Canning’s unwanted record of 119 days in 1827 due to death. A leadership election is set to take place “within the week”.
While her tenure as Prime Minister was troubling and wild, Liz Truss has had a short but turbulent time as the leader of the United Kingdom. It shares a message to both sides of the political spectrum, be careful what you dream for.
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