Liz Truss
Liz Truss was prime minister of the United Kingdom for forty-nine days, from 6 September 2022, when she was appointed by Elizabeth II at Balmoral two days before the Queen died, to 25 October 2022, when Sunak replaced her, the shortest tenure in the office's history, ended by her own budget. In the mini-budget of 23 September her chancellor Kwarteng announced forty-five billion pounds of unfunded tax cuts, the largest since 1972, including the abolition of the top rate, without the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecast. After that the pound fell to its lowest ever against the dollar, the gilt market moved so far that the pension funds' hedges failed and the Bank of England had to buy bonds for a fortnight to stop them collapsing. The mortgage rates rose two points in a week. The party, having chosen her over Sunak in a members' ballot of the summer by fifty-seven per cent on the promise of exactly this, removed her within the month after she had sacked Kwarteng, reversed nearly everything, lost her home secretary. She presided over a vote on fracking that her whips said was a confidence vote and then said was not. A tabloid's livestream of a lettuce outlasted her, which is the image. She was born in Oxford in 1975 to a mathematics professor and a nurse who took her to Greenham Common, grew up in Paisley and Leeds, read PPE at Merton College, Oxford, where she was a Liberal Democrat who spoke for abolishing the monarchy. She worked for Shell and Cable and Wireless, and entered parliament for South West Norfolk in 2010. After that she was in the cabinet under three prime ministers, at environment, justice, the Treasury, trade and, from 2021, the Foreign Office, where the war in Ukraine made her the hawk the party members liked. She had campaigned for Remain in 2016 and become the Brexiteers' candidate by 2022. The party did not mind. She has spent the years since saying that the deep state, the Bank, the Treasury and the economic establishment sabotaged her, in a book called Ten Years to Save the West, at American conservative conferences where the audiences know her. In the general election of July 2024 she lost South West Norfolk, a seat the Conservatives had held since 1964, by six hundred votes to Labour. The lettuce is in the museum of the century's politics. The gilt market is the reason every chancellor since has published the forecast.
- Lived: 1975 CE – ?
- Nationality: British
- Roles: prime minister, politician
