Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

News Desk :
Liz Truss has resigned as UK prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party in a statement outside Downing Street on Thursday.
The dramatic announcement outside the door to 10 Downing Street came shortly after the PM requested a meeting with the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, reports news agencies.
Truss said she was doing so because she could not deliver the mandate on which she was elected as Tory leader.
Her departure after 45 days in office makes her the shortest-serving PM in UK history.
Truss said her successor would be elected by next week.
 “We’ve agreed that there will be a leadership election to be completed within the next week, after senior backbench MP Graham Brady told her the game was up.
“This will ensure that we remain on a path to deliver our fiscal plan and maintain our country’s economic stability and national security.”
Without going into details, Brady told reporters that the new leader would be in place by Friday next week, in time for new finance minister Jeremy Hunt to deliver a crucial budget statement on October 31. Brady’s statement suggested the party could find a way of bypassing the Tory rank and file who elected Truss, in the face of warnings by Sunak that her debt-fuelled programme threatened higher inflation and market turmoil.
Earlier, Tory MPs revolted against Truss after a series of U-turns on her economic plan sapped her of authority.
Labour leader Keir Starmer, whose opposition party has surged in opinion polls on the back of Truss’s short, eventful tenure, demanded a general election “now”.
“This is not just a soap opera at the top of the Tory party,” he said, warning of “huge damage” to the UK economy, although the pound perked up a little on Truss’s dramatic announcement.
In a brief speech outside Downing Street, Truss said the Conservative Party had elected her on a mandate to cut taxes and boost economic growth.
“But given the situation, I recognise that I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” she added.
Truss said she would remain in post until a successor formally takes over as party leader and is appointed prime minister by King Charles III.
She also said that she entered “office at a time of great economic and international instability”, as war rages in Ukraine and living costs skyrocket.
The end for Truss came after a key minister resigned and many Tory MPs rebelled over an important vote in chaotic scenes at the House of Commons late Wednesday.
By Thursday morning, more than a dozen Conservative MPs had publicly urged Truss to resign, after her tax-cutting plans caused a market meltdown during an already severe cost-of-living crisis.
Many more were reported to have submitted letters to Brady calling for Truss to be removed, although party rules would have forbidden another leadership campaign for 12 months.
“The prime minister acknowledges yesterday was a difficult day and she recognises the public wanted to see the government focusing less on politics and more on delivering their priorities,” her official spokesman told reporters.
Barely two hours later, she quit, and will fall well short of Tory predecessor George Canning who served 118 days as prime minister in 1827 before dying in office.
Amid Russia’s war in Ukraine and growing economic problems, Britain’s allies have been observing the tumult with concern, with political instability recurrent since the country voted in 2016 to quit the European Union.
“It is important that Great Britain regains political stability very quickly, and that is all I wish,” French President Emmanuel Macron said after Truss’s announcement.
For its part, the Russian foreign ministry said Britain has “never known such a disgrace as prime minister”.
Events reached a head after what right-wing tabloid The Sun called “a day of extraordinary mayhem” on Wednesday. Interior minister Suella Braverman left, apparently at Truss’s demand after she sent a government document in a personal email.
But Braverman, an arch right-winger who enjoys strong support among the Tory membership, used her resignation message to attack Truss in blistering terms.
There then followed farcical scenes in parliament as many Tory MPs rebelled against the government’s demand that they drop the party’s manifesto commitment to maintain a ban on fracking.
Accusations swirled of heavy-handed efforts to whip MPs into line, some of whom later briefed the media that it was the nail in the coffin of the Truss premiership.
Conservative lord Ed Vaizey said the “only way out of this mess is for Liz Truss to stand down and for somebody to be appointed as prime minister by Conservative MPs”.