Britain's political farce takes down another prime minister as Tories get set to try again
CBC
By next Friday, and possibly sooner, Britain will have its third Prime Minister so far in 2022 — its fifth since the Brexit vote in 2016 — and still no certainty that its unprecedented political crisis is on its way to being resolved.
"Whatever happens, it's a mess," said pollster Joe Twyman of Deltapoll. "It's very difficult to see how a [Conservative] Party as divided and fractious as this can unite behind one candidate."
Liz Truss's dramatic resignation as Prime Minister Thursday — just 44 days after winning the leadership — makes her the shortest serving PM in British history. And the just-beginning leadership race that's set to pick a successor in just seven days, will also make this the fastest turnover of power the country has ever witnessed.
"We can't have a revolving door of chaos," said opposition leader Keir Starmer, whose Labour Party weighed in with a 36 point lead over the Conservatives in a recent poll, the biggest gap recorded in almost thirty years.
"This isn't a soap opera at the top of the Tory party — it's doing huge damage to our economy and the reputation of our country," he said.
Starmer and other opposition MPs are demanding an immediate general election, which would, in all likelihood, lead to a Conservative decimation, and so the Tories will forge ahead with yet another leadership contest.
Unless called earlier, the next general election is not set to take place until January 2025.
"This is the last chance saloon for the Conservative Party," said Catherine Haddon, a senior fellow at London's Institute for Government.
"Unless you can actually bring your party together, get votes through Parliament, and be able to have a functioning government, you're not showing you can govern. And if you can't do that, the only option is a general election."
It was only a few weeks ago that a campaigning Truss promised party members policies that would tame soaring inflation. She vowed to slash taxes for the wealthy and promised relief from sky-high energy bills.
But financial markets hated the debt-laden budget crafted by Truss and her former Chancellor of the Exchequer, or finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng.
It sent the pound plummeting and mortgage rates soaring. The health of public pension plans were suddenly in jeopardy, prompting a momentous intervention of bond buying from the Bank of England in an attempt to head off a full blown economic meltdown.
Last week, Truss fired Kwarteng and tried to right the ship with a new finance minister, Jeremy Hunt. He reversed almost every one of the controversial budget measures, but Truss's death spiral only intensified.
The final straw appears to have happened Wednesday evening during a chaotic vote in the House of Commons on whether to ban hydraulic fracking for shale gas. Longtime Tory MP Sir Charles Walker called the event "an absolute disgrace."
