Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Britain’s version of a parliamentary democracy, at present, looks risible. In Liz Truss, it has produced the most inane prime minister in its history.
In just seven weeks the prime minister has lost all credibility. She staked her future—and the country’s—on an economic plan so ill-conceived that it was virtually dead on arrival. She mindlessly repeated a mantra that she would “deliver,” but is left with nothing to deliver. Most members of her Tory party believe she has doomed them to an election wipe-out. And in a damning editorial, The Economist said she had the shelf life of a head of lettuce.
The Tories were once thought of as the party that enjoyed a permanent majority because of their fiscal prudence and all-round competence. Truss destroyed that. In a matter of days, the new chancellor of the exchequer, Jeremy Hunt—striding through Whitehall with the confident independence of an adult scolding a wayward child—junked the whole Truss doctrine.