What comes next for a country in chaos?
 | By Tim Schneider Staff Editor, Opinion |
Chaos doesn't do it justice. |
After 44 days, during which she helped bury the queen, crashed the pound, fired her chancellor and suffered a sequence of humiliating reversals, Liz Truss resigned as prime minister of Britain. In a terse speech on Thursday, she admitted she "cannot deliver the mandate" on which she was elected and pulled the plug on the shortest British premiership ever. |
Her tragicomic tenure was an extraordinary spectacle. But it was also, as Peter Oborne writes in a guest essay today, a summation of the Conservative Party's ruination of Britain. For 12 years, in coalition and alone, the party has been in charge of the government. In that time, it has given the country austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson and now this. To Oborne, a former chief political commentator for The Daily Telegraph and notable figure on the right, such recklessness can't go on. |
"For the fiasco of her premiership and the disastrous state of the country, the Conservative Party must collectively take responsibility," he writes. "Two years could pass before the next general election. But Britain needs one now." |
He's unlikely to get his wish soon. The race to replace Truss — with potential successors including one Boris Johnson — has already begun; a new leader will be announced next Friday. Facing obliteration at the polls, the Conservative Party will surely do everything in its power to avoid a general election. But there's no indication another leader will fare much better. |
A bizarre interlude in British politics is coming to a close. And another, perhaps, is just beginning. |
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