Great Britain on the brink: In the middle of the fight against economic slump and Putin imperialism, the nuclear power affords a government crisis that eclipses everything that has gone before. It’s not just Liz Truss that’s finally gone, but also her party, the Tories.
No British head of government has been caught out so quickly. After just 44 days, Liz Truss threw in the towel. George Canning held the previous record. In 1827, death separated him from office after less than 120 days. In the case of Truss, it was an increasingly looming palace revolt – and the largest and most rapid loss of standing ever suffered by a resident of 10 Downing Street.
In the merciless British press, the hapless and instinctless truss had been cleared for shooting for days. The commentators treated her at will and turned her into a national joke. At times the PM has been caricatured as a human cannonball about to be fired, at others it has been said that she is “Toast” – about to be ejected from the toaster. The tabloid Daily Star let a head of lettuce compete with the Prime Minister: who keeps longer?
Truss lost the race to the veg just after she had just expressed her will to persevere – she doesn’t give up and will get on with her job. The empty promise fit seamlessly into a series of unfounded announcements and humiliating backtracks that Truss recently made in increasing numbers during her six-week stint at 10 Downing Street.
“Chaos” was the word most commonly used in Britain when referring to Truss’s administration. In the short span of time since the passing of stability anchor Elizabeth II, the Prime Minister managed to lose her finance ministers and home ministers, roiled the financial markets and sent the pound sterling plummeting, as well as hitting rock bottom popularity ratings on which a British Prime Minister ever brought.
Truss, it was said in her own ranks, was still in office but no longer in power. Her new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, was seen as a shadow prime minister who should steer the country into calmer waters. Hunt had already been crushed by the now-defunct Prime Minister’s suicidal tax plan and was looking for painful savings to consolidate state finances.
He wanted to present a concept for this, the final swan song for “Trussonomics”, at the end of the month – the potential next humiliation for the Prime Minister. She had previously frightened twelve million recipients of state pensions with contradictory statements about pension stability.
British tabloids, always bloodthirsty, happily speculated about who might be wielding the dagger against their own head of government, despite protestations to the contrary. Hunt, whose ward she already appeared to be? Secretary of Defense “Big” Ben Wallace, who could strike if Truss had to cash in on her promise of higher military spending due to cash constraints?
Or was it Rishi Sunah and Penny Mordaunt, who, like Hunt Truss, lost in the race for party leadership? Both seemed to neutralize each other because they could not agree on who should get which piece of booty if the worst came to the worst: prime ministerial post or treasury office.
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More and more Tory backbenchers came out of cover, accusing their own number one at 10 Downing Street of catastrophic incompetence and calling for their retirement. The turmoil in the Tory camp was so great that not a few of them wished Boris Johnson back – that clownish gambler who always acted on the edge of seriousness and whom they had just chased from court with shame and disgrace.
The call for a new election rose louder and louder in the country – which the Tories must fear as a threat to their very existence. According to surveys, the truss chaos has thrown them back so far in the voters’ favor that they are threatened with a landslide victory for the Labor Party, which has been in opposition for twelve years, and political insignificance.
Now the British Conservatives are experiencing the fourth change in their party leadership within six years – a political oath of disclosure. More than ever, the Tories overshadow all intrigues and bloody weddings of the fantasy saga “Game of Thrones” in a fatal mixture of political farce and self-destruction instinct. Even before Truss resigned, they gave rise to devastating judgments across Europe.
In the former British colony of Malta, the local “Times” scoffed: “Britain already resembles Italy with its frequently changing prime ministers.” The Belgian daily “De Standaard” correctly predicted: “Only humiliation and insignificance await Liz Truss.” The Greek The newspaper “Naftemporiki” found: “The exit from the EU has laid the foundation for the Tories to consciously ignore reality – and to continue to deceive the British with new untruths.”
The fall from grace of Brexit, ruthlessly pushed by the Tories, is one element of Britain’s pressing economic woes, which Truss has fueled with thoughtless announcements of tax cuts for the wealthy. Added to this are the effects of Russia’s imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, which the United Kingdom needs as a strong and reliable military partner. But high inflation, energy and food prices not only destabilized Truss’ reputation, but the country as a whole.
The ruling party of the Tories, meanwhile, seems to have only one concern: how to stay in power, with whoever is at the top. In fact, for a long time it was only the approximately 170,000 members of the Conservative Party and their elected representatives in London who, with ever new personnel changes, worked out the filling of the Prime Minister’s chair – not the voters.
Even before Truss left Brussels, leading German European politicians were looking at the Thames with great concern. Green Anna Cavazzini, Chairwoman of the European Parliament’s Internal Market Committee, warned of a “United Kingdom on the brink of collapse”. The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the EU Parliament, David McAllister (CDU), warned: “As the European Union, we naturally want a stable government in London.”
It is now completely unclear how the aftermath of Brexit will continue after Truss. The chairman of the Trade Committee of the EU Parliament, Bernd Lange (SPD), had hoped immediately before the failure of the prime minister that the signs could now point to “relaxation and constructive cooperation”. There is “finally a slight optimism that we can open a new chapter of cooperation”.
There can be no talk of optimism about the state of Great Britain at the moment. But the perseverance of the British has been legendary ever since Winston Churchill promised them nothing but blood, sweat and tears during World War II. “Keep calm and carry on” is the national motto. Westminster must now come to rest quickly, with a clean cut. The Tories are so screwed up that UK voters should have their say.
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