British Prime Minister Resigns after 45 Days in Office
Liz Truss has resigned as prime minister and will step down after a week-long emergency contest to find her successor, she has announced outside Downing Street.
It follows a turbulent 45 days in office during which Truss’s mini-budget crashed the markets, she lost two key ministers and shed the confidence of almost all her own MPs.
Her statement came after she met Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs at Downing Street, followed by her deputy PM, Thérèse Coffey, and the party chair, Jake Berry.
Truss said she had entered office with “a vision for a low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit”.
She went on: “I recognise that, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative party. I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative party.
“This morning I met the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady. We’ve agreed that there will be a leadership election to be completed within the next week. This will ensure that we remain to deliver our fiscal plans and maintain our country’s economic stability and national security. I will remain as prime minister until a successor has been chosen.”
Opposition parties called for an immediate general election, saying the Conservatives had no mandate to govern.
Keir Starmer said: “After 12 years of Tory failure, the British people deserve so much better than this revolving door of chaos. In the last few years, the Tories have set record-high taxation, trashed our institutions and created a cost-of-living crisis. Now, they have crashed the economy so badly that people are facing £500 a month extra on their mortgages. The damage they have done will take years to fix.”
The Tories could not respond by again “shuffling the people at the top without the consent of the British people”, the Labour leader added.
The SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, said: “It was inevitable Liz Truss would have to go after the damage she’s inflicted – but merely swapping leaders of a broken Tory government is not enough. There must now be a general election – people will accept nothing less.”
Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Greens, said: “The Tory chaos has spiralled beyond any pretence that the country has a viable government.”
