Liz Truss will go down in history as the shortest serving British prime minister, and arguably the most hapless. The irony is that before entering Downing Street she was a political survivor who had lasted eight years in the cabinet under three different prime ministers. Her skill had been to adapt to others’ instincts; her downfall was to follow her own.
Truss’s chance to become prime minister came in July 2022, when Boris Johnson resigned after months of scandals. She pitched herself as a continuity candidate, while setting out a vision of tax cuts that differed sharply from Johnson’s own mandate. When her rival Rishi Sunak argued this would lead to higher mortgage rates, she accused him of “negative, declinist language”.
For party members still in awe of the memory of Margaret Thatcher, and emboldened by having enacted Brexit in the face of political opposition, Truss’s straight-talking, full-throated conservatism was irresistible. She beat Sunak among party members, by 81,000 votes to 60,000.