In a swan song to a tumultuous tenure British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced that she is resigning after holding office for just 45 days as the United Kingdom's shortest serving prime minister. She made the announcement for the same outside her office at 10 Downing Street.
Her short-lived premiership also presided over a generational shift in the British monarchy after Queen Elizabeth II passed away on September 8.
She will continue to be in office for another week as her party dashes to find her successor. The method for this is yet to be spelt out on how they will find the next British prime minister.
Internal unrest
Her resignation comes as unrest against her over last few days saw backroom plots, intra-party scheming and dissent over her government, which was shaken by a series of brief and ill-received policies that were rolled back, but whose damage had been done.
Newspapers and tabloid were flush with chatter within her Conservative Party of pathways through which her own party could supplant her to do spillback these policies had done to the party's image.
Before Truss announced her resignation, she met with leading officials of the Conservative Party's 1922 Committee, which oversees internal leadership contests.
Several polls also show the opposition Labour holding a 25 percentage point lead over her party were an election to be held in the United Kingdom immediately.
The dreaded mini-budget
The pain of the government started when her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, introduced a so-called 'mini-budget' to tackle the ongoing cost-of-living-crisis in the UK. The plan slashed taxes on the richest, froze duties on the sale of alcohol, cancelled a planned hike in corporation tax and a outlined a plan to entice foreigners to shop in the United Kingdom tax-free.
Markets did not take kindly to these measures as they saw them as fiscally irresponsible. The pound fell to its lowest against the dollar, while British assets like bonds fell in value. The Bank of England single-handedly led the economic response to calm markets and went into firefighting mode. Consequently, she kicked Kwarteng from office less than a week ago on October 14.
In a media blitz, she and the new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt tried to calm the markets as they tacitly acknowledged the government's mistake as they reversed a significant portion of the mini-budget.
Data released yesterday show no sign of the cost-of-living-crisis ebbing, as inflation touched 10.1% year-on-year.
Her Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, also resigned yesterday, admitting that she sent official documents through private e-mail in a security breach, but not before criticizing the government on her way out over differences between them on issues like migration.
The right of the Conservative Party
She succeeded Boris Johnson on September 6 this year, after he had to resign over several scandals. She served in the Johnson-led government as the Foreign Secretary and she beat Rishi Sunak - who served as Chancellor under Johnson until the near-end of his government - for the top job.
Her faction and cabinet appointments were firmly considered to be from the right of the Conservative Party.
She co-authored a book called 'Britannia Unchained' in 2012 with Kwarteng, Priti Patel (Home Secretary under Johnson), Dominic Raab (Deputy Prime Minister under Johnson) and Chris Skidmore (a Conservative MP and former junior minister for science). The book would serve as a sneak peek into the policies that her government would eventually adopt through the mini-budget.
Collectively, this group argued in favour of a small and non-interventionist government, minor restriction on the growth of wealth with accompanying tax benefits for the wealthy and hardline free-market enterprise.
Upon Kwarteng's resignation, Hunt, who took the onus of reversing the mini-budget, was called by insiders as the "de-facto prime minister", in move considered to betray the political and economic leaning of the Truss-faction.
