Liz Truss, the British prime minister, announced her resignation on Thursday following a turbulent and unusually brief stint characterised by economic policies that shook financial markets and a political party uprising that destroyed her authority.
Truss served as prime minister for only 45 days when she was ousted, making her the shortest-serving leader in British history and the third Conservative prime minister to fall in as many years. Her resignation deepens the unrest that has gripped Britain since it left the European Union and places the country's government in a precarious position as it deals with a cost-of-living problem and impending recession.
Truss, 47, announced in front of her 10 Downing Street office, "I cannot achieve the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party."
Although the financial markets exhaled a sigh of relief, the ruling party must now act rapidly to appoint a leader who can bring its rival sections together. Truss said that she would stay in office until a replacement was selected, which the Conservative Party claimed it would accomplish by the end of the next week—a remarkably short time frame for selecting the new head of one of the biggest economies in the world.
Rishi Sunak, the former Treasury secretary who lost to Truss in the previous leadership race, Penny Mordaunt, Ben Wallace, and Boris Johnson, the former prime minister who was dismissed in July due to a string of ethics issues, are all potential challengers.
The low-tax, low-regulation economic policies that her party used to elect Truss turned out to be disastrous in the face of skyrocketing inflation and sluggish economic growth.
Investors were concerned that Britain couldn't afford the massive tax cuts she proposed in her economic plan on September 23. Mortgage rates rose and the value of the pound plummeted, causing hardship for many who were already struggling economically due to the pandemic and their enterprises.
