British PM Liz Truss resigns 6 weeks after taking over

Embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned on Thursday after merely six weeks in power as pressure for her ouster mounted from within the Conservative Party.

A leadership election will be completed within the next week to replace Truss, who has turned out to be the shortest serving prime minister in Britain’s history.

Truss said she would remain as the prime minister until a successor is chosen.

Addressing the media outside 10 Downing Street, Truss said, “I recognise that given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party. I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party.”

“I came into office at a time of great economic and international instability. Families and businesses were worried about how to pay their bills, Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine threatens the security of our whole continent and our country has been held back for too long by low economic growth”, Truss added.

Just yesterday, Home Secretary Suella Braverman had resigned, barely five days after Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was asked to go.

Truss has been under pressure from within the Conservative Party over the presentation of the mini-budget by her friend and Chancellor Kwarteng, that pounded the markets and pulled down the pound last month. Both Truss and Kwarteng were severely criticised for ending the income tax on the super-rich.

Kwarteng’s high-profile resignation was followed yesterday, by Braverman who indicted the government, saying: “Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics. I have made a mistake, I accept responsibility; I resign,” Braverman said in her resignation letter which she posted on Twitter.

Ironically, Truss announced her resignation less than 24 hours after she said, “I am a fighter and not a quitter”, while hitting back at MPs who criticised her.  She had taken over as the Prime Minister in early September after a long-drawn partly leadership battle with former Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

Also read: It’s Rishi Sunak versus Liz Truss in final contest to become UK’s Prime Minister