UK prime minister Liz Truss goes from triumph to trouble in 6 weeks

Truss faces mutiny inside governing Conservative Party that leaves her leadership hanging by a thread

The last few weeks have brought ‘one horror story after another’, says Conservative lawmaker Robert Halfon

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British Prime Minister Liz Truss during a news conference in London on Friday. Photo: Pool via Reuters

Published: 10:40pm, 16 Oct 2022

When Liz Truss was running to lead Britain this summer, an ally predicted her first weeks in office would be turbulent.

But few were prepared for the scale of the sound and fury – least of all Truss herself. In just six weeks, the prime minister’s libertarian economic policies have triggered a financial crisis, emergency central bank intervention, multiple U-turns and the firing of her Treasury chief.

Now Truss faces a mutiny inside the governing Conservative Party that leaves her leadership hanging by a thread.

A man pulls down a banner held by two protesters as Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss makes a speech at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, England earlier this month. Photo: AP

Conservative lawmaker Robert Halfon fumed on Sunday that the last few weeks had brought “one horror story after another”.

“The government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free-market experiments,” he told Sky News.

It’s not as if the party wasn’t warned. During the summertime contest to lead the Conservatives, Truss called herself a disruptor who would challenge economic “orthodoxy”. She promised she would cut taxes and slash red tape, and would spur Britain’s sluggish economy to grow.

Her rival, former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, argued that immediate tax cuts would be reckless amid the economic shockwaves from the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine.