Another surprise resignation from the government, an evening of melodrama in Parliament: British Prime Minister Liz Truss, already in the hot seat after six weeks in power, is hanging by a thread in Downing Street.
“Chaos”: the word is repeated on all the front pages of the British press on Thursday morning, to sum up the nightmarish day of the day before in Westminster where a vote turned into a rat race. For the tabloid The Sun, Liz Truss is “broken”. His “authority is in tatters after an extremely chaotic day”, writes the daily, adding that “the government is crumbling before us”.
“The reality of Liz Truss’ power was fragile […] she is now doomed”, asserts The Times in its editorial.
Weakened within her conservative majority, more unpopular than ever in public opinion, Liz Truss may assure us that she wants to stay in power, her situation seems more and more untenable, after the abandonment in open country of her economic program and the departure of two of its main ministers.
His government now lives from hour to hour but, after 12 years in power, his party seems paralyzed so far, unable to agree on a successor and refusing to face early elections sending him back to the opposition.
“Liz Truss must leave as soon as possible,” said former Conservative minister David Frost, who previously supported her ardently, in a forum at the Daily Telegraph.
MP Crispin Blunt said Thursday morning on the BBC that “a change was needed today to stop this cacophony and give our country the governance it needs”.
For the Conservatives, the challenge now is to find a successor capable of both rallying the party and inspiring confidence in a country which, beyond the political chaos, is undergoing a major economic and social crisis with inflation which has reached 10.1% in September, a 40-year high.
The way out of the current political stalemate depends on it, but the different tendencies within the party do not yet seem to have agreed while several names are circulating, such as those of Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt – the minister in charge of relations with the Parliament — or even Boris Johnson, the prime minister she replaced in September.
In the meantime, the Labor opposition continues to prance in the polls and its leader, Keir Starmer, again called on Thursday for the holding of a general election.
The Tories are “failing in their basic patriotic duty to keep the British out of their pathetic quarrels”, he said in a speech to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), at a time when many social movements are agitating the country. in the face of the cost of living crisis.
He warned, however, that given the “damage” caused by the Tories, “it will be really difficult” even with a Labor government.
Reprisals against the slingers
On Wednesday, after a difficult question and answer session in Parliament, where Liz Truss called herself a “fighter” under the attacks and boos of the opposition, the day turned to the Stations of the Cross for the Prime Minister.
Less than a week after the departure of Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng, it was the very right-wing Interior Minister Suella Braverman who had to leave a government ship down the drain, for growing differences with Liz Truss on immigration, according to British media.
She was replaced by Grant Shapps, former transport minister under Boris Johnson, in a further gesture of openness to Liz Truss’s former opponents in the Downing Street race, with Shapps having backed Rishi Sunak.
Braverman explained that he resigned for sending official documents with his personal email, breaking the ministerial code, but the British media mainly evoke the growing differences between the two women on immigration.
The evening was then eventful in Parliament where a vote – won by the government – on the lifting of the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, a polluting technique for exploiting shale gas, visibly turned into a rat race between the Conservatives.
Deputies of the majority refused to vote in the direction of the government, in spite of the reprisals to which they expose themselves, Downing Street having expressly asked to respect the instruction of vote.
All these events “are a disgrace”, this “instability” is “unfair” for the British in the midst of an economic crisis, launched Labor MP Yvette Cooper, who asked a question in Parliament on Thursday morning about the departure of Ms. Braverman.