For 40 days, Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain has ridden a roller coaster of ridicule.
Her “mini budget”, on which she hung her free-market credentials, was a disaster: Bond yields rocketed, the pound tanked, and the markets, far from gratified, were distinctly upset. To mitigate the damage, she reversed a tax cut for high earners — and was rewarded with more mockery. At the Conservative Party conference, protesters played loud clown music, and the police refused to intervene, as sure a sign of a failing administration in Britain as the storming of the Winter Palace in Russia.
Embattled, Ms. Truss raged against the “anti-growth” coalition, opponents of her supposed revitalisation of the British economy through tax cuts. It is a remarkably capacious coalition, with room for King Charles III (who last week greeted her with the chilling words “Back again. Dear, oh, dear”), the BBC and most of the Conservative Party. To judge from the polls, which put Labour 33 points ahead of the Conservatives and Ms. Truss’s approval rating at minus 47, the country is in that camp, too.
On Friday, things got worse still. Ms. Truss fired Kwasi Kwarteng, her chancellor and friend, and replaced him with Jeremy Hunt, a Tory moderate who has torn up the rest of her economic platform with the performative solemnity of a disappointed teacher. The dreaded letters of no confidence are flooding in, and Conservative lawmakers are talking about changing the leadership rules — she is supposed to have a year’s grace — to dethrone her. Ms. Truss may limp on, but she is without power. For all intents and purposes, her prime ministership is finished.
Behind this monumental failure stalks Boris Johnson, the most important ghost in British politics. Ms. Truss, of course, was his preferred successor. His support was typically cynical: He backed Ms. Truss in the leadership contest knowing that once the parliamentary party had chosen the final two candidates — and they favoured Rishi Sunak, whose resignation brought down Mr. Johnson — Tory party members would pick the worse one. They duly delivered. Ms. Truss was Mr. Johnson’s departing gift, a human land mine to level the ground for his possible return.
It goes much deeper than Mr. Johnson, of course. British politics now happens in the electorate’s subconscious, and that makes us vulnerable to knaves. We are far from seriousness, data and hope. The choice of Brexit, the nightmare we are slowly awakening to, proves it. So does the romanticism of Mr. Johnson’s 2019 election triumph — where he rode the wave of “Get Brexit done” to nearly 14 million votes — and the astonishing collapse in Ms. Truss’s polling. The process of casting off, of angry repudiation, is accelerating: We are now on our fourth prime minister since 2016. But something more emotional is afoot.
Queen Elizabeth II’s death, on the third day of the new prime minister’s tenure, left Britain mourning a leader it loved. The defenestration of Ms. Truss, I feel, is an unacknowledged part of that public mourning, a way of honouring one Elizabeth by rejecting another. Ms. Truss certainly invited opprobrium with her recklessness: Only six per cent of the country supports her tax cuts, while Elizabeth II preached unity and love. That is the kind of authoritarianism the British like, the velvet kind. In comparison, Ms. Truss looked tinny and pitiful. She could be dismissed.
Prospects for the Tories are not much better. After 12 years in power, exhausted by Brexit, the pandemic and growing factionalism, they find themselves at the mercy of Mr. Johnson’s ambition, their own inadequacy and their members’ hunger for culling the state against the country’s wishes. Their choice of Ms. Truss was part error, part final roll of a doomsday cult. Britain, contrary to stereotype, is a kaleidoscope of opinion, not two resolutely opposed factions. The majority accepted Conservative rule for more than a decade. But Ms. Truss, bringer of market chaos and international condemnation, is where that consent ends.
Jokes about Ms. Truss — the prime minister dressed as a bin or likened to a lettuce — are cruel, larded with sexism and snobbery. But they connect to a truth: Ms. Truss is as close to ambition for its own sake as you can find, and the spectacle of her failure carries a certain thrill. Yet, in truth, her leadership — so ideological and brittle — was never going to work. Mr. Johnson, one senses, knew as much and wanted to prove that only he could hold together the electoral coalition won in 2019. He has succeeded. Ahead of schedule, Ms. Truss has collapsed.
In time, Britain may free itself of Mr. Johnson’s spell and Ms. Truss’s unreason — and choose leaders who deal in facts, not fantasies, and think of the country, not themselves. We may say at last: Enough of post-truth and extremism and drinking the dregs of empire. Yet that horizon is still a way off. Right now, we know, Ms. Truss will fall.
For the Tories, it won’t bring renewal. And for the country, it won’t bring catharsis.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Tanya Gold is a British journalist who writes for Harper’s Magazine, The Spectator and UnHerd.
