Who lasts longer?
Newspaper lets Truss compete against lettuce
10/15/2022 1:26 am
Liz Truss has been Prime Minister for less than six weeks. Whether her term of office will last much longer is extremely questionable, even after her recent political about-face. The “Economist” recently predicted the shelf life of a head of lettuce – a prediction whose accuracy can now be checked via live cam.
“Can Liz Truss last longer than this salad?” The British tabloid “Daily Star” asked this question on Friday and set up a live broadcast on YouTube, on which a photo of the Prime Minister can be seen next to a head of lettuce with eyes glued on. The Economist magazine recently certified Truss as having the shelf life of a salad in view of the rapidly developing government crisis.
After Truss fired her Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng after just over five weeks on Friday and carried out a tax policy U-turn, speculation increased that she, too, could soon be out of office. The most recent decisions were preceded by a crisis in the financial markets and a slide in the value of the British pound against the US dollar, which Truss and Kwarteng had triggered by announcing massive tax breaks with no plans to counterbalance them. Truss reversed parts of the tax plans on Friday. However, the prime minister refused to resign.
Truss announced that the corporate tax should now – as planned by the previous government – be increased. However, she insisted that her policy of lower taxes and high investment incentives was the right one. The only reason for the turnaround was the market, which had been irritated by the decisions to make significant tax cuts, Truss said. Because of the massive criticism, Truss and Kwarteng had already withdrawn the planned abolition of the top tax rate. Whether the partial U-turn and the ejection of Kwarteng, widely viewed as a pawn sacrifice, will be enough to keep Truss in office is questionable.
Tories must fear new elections
On Friday, the markets initially reacted positively to the announcements. But Truss’s defiant appearance at the afternoon press conference drew criticism. British media quoted Tory MPs as calling for their resignation. It is not unlikely that Truss will soon be overthrown by his own party. According to “Times” information, there is information in the room that leading Tories are supporting a leadership tandem made up of top politicians Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, who lost to Truss in the internal struggle for party chairmanship in the summer.
However, a new change at the top of the Tory party is likely to fuel calls for an early general election. This is actually a red rag for the Conservatives, because the opposition Labor Party leads in some polls by more than 30 points. As the opinion research institute Ipsos determined, only 16 percent of Britons are satisfied with Truss – that is the worst value that has ever been measured for a prime minister. The business magazine The Economist recently commented that Truss blew up “her own government with a package of unfunded tax cuts and energy price guarantees.” “If you take away the ten days of mourning after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, she was in control for seven days. That’s about the shelf life of a salad,” the paper wrote.