271. Breaking records

Following the rather grim comedy of Boris Johnson, the Conservatives gave Britain the even more ridiculous spectacle of Liz Truss. She proceeded to push the British economy to the edge of the abyss, aided and abetted by her Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi ‘Kamikwasi’ Kwarteng. Fortunately, her colleagues realised what a disastrous mess the Tory membership had made electing Truss leader, and chucked her out again, establishing a new record, previously held by George Canning since 1827, for the shortest tenure of any Prime Minister in office.

To the delight of the Daily Star, which livestreamed a lettuce and a photo of Liz Truss, to see whether she could outlast the lettuce, it was the vegetable that won.

It was Rishi Sunak who followed her into office, and he worked hard with his Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to get the economy back on its feet. Unfortunately, they went back to the beginning of this long period of Tory rule, to austerity politics. They worked no better second time around than first and only cut the public deficit by a little over half, leaving debt still climbing.

Meanwhile, immigration was raising its head again as a key question. Oddly enough, net migration – people in less people out – had risen since Brexit, which many had backed as a way to limit migration in the first place.

The new election took place on 4 July 2022. It was an election of fragmentation, with the old dominant parties of Labour and the Tories plumbing new depths of their joint share of the popular vote, while smaller parties – the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the new kids on the block, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, surging forward.

The success of Reform UK was the most striking. And the most ominous for the future of the other parties.

Illustration: Liz Truss and the lettuce. Photo from the Daily Star

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License