Liz Truss has resigned as UK Prime Minister after only six weeks in office. A new Conservative leadership election will take place in the coming weeks.

Liz Truss has resigned as UK Prime Minister after only six weeks in office. A new Conservative leadership election will take place in the coming weeks.

Truss has been facing calls to resign after weeks of instability and a chain of events that left MPs, and the nation, with a severe lack of confidence in her ability to continue on. The sacking of her two highest ministers, - former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and now former Home Secretary Suella Braverman - the reversal of almost all of the mini-budget proposals, and general disunity within the Tory party have all contributed to her demise. She had told the House of Commons just yesterday at PMQs that she is a “fighter, not a quitter.” 

This morning (20 October) Truss met with chair of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady in No 10 for a crisis meeting, followed by party chair Jake Berry. Truss will stay on as PM until a successor is chosen via a leadership election, but Labour leader Keir Starmer and other MPs are calling for a general election. He said “the Conservative Party has shown it no longer has a mandate to govern.”

There are speculations already on who will replace Truss, possibly other candidates who ran in the recent leadership contest Rishi Sunak or Penny Mordaunt, or recently appointed Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. Truss, PM for only 45 days, is the fourth Conservative PM to resign since 2016. Speaking to the nation in front of Downing Street this afternoon she said:

"We delivered on energy bills and on cutting national insurance and we set out a vision for a low tax, high growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit. I recognise though, 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."

Truss’ resignation may cause further market instability and a drop in the value of the pound as the UK government is plunged into chaos once more. With the nation facing an extreme cost of living crisis and a hard winter ahead, the Conservative party’s political drama puts the country in further disarray. The opposition party see a general election as the only democratic option left, and in the coming days the fallout of Truss’ resignation may cause demands for an election to grow even more.

(Sources: The Independent