Within just 44 days, the outgoing Prime Minister came close to achieving what left-wing radicals spend their lives dreaming of — the destruction of the Conservative Party
By Tristan Cross, October 11, 2022
In uncertain times, we cling to the comforting familiarity of routine. Each week, friends and families all around Britain will huddle around their television sets — takeaways secured, fridges well-stocked, beers appropriately frosty — in giddy anticipation of the latest spontaneous announcement from Downing Street, for a Tory is certain to appear outside and resign in abject disgrace. And as the remorseless click-click of camera shutters begins to swell cacophonously all around them, they sense the eyes of the baying general public behind the lenses, hungrily licking their lips, drinking it all in. And the sheer weight of it all – the political failure, the personal humiliation, the permanently soiled reputation — becomes too much to bear. And they begin to sob. Softly at first, and then uncontrollably. And the nation erupts into bales of collective, cathartic laughter.
Though these resignations never seem to much change the essential facts of our miserable little lives, the brief respite they offer from them is incalculable. This week, Liz Truss left us in want.
As she concluded her electrifying tenure as the shortest-serving UK Prime Minister in British history, an unmistakable smile began to tease itself across her lips. Hers is a political failure that shatters records on multiple fronts, that defies the lowest of expectations — and yet she seemed to be revelling in it. Why? Cynics identified the £115,000 annual allowance she’s now entitled to receive from the taxpayer for the rest of her life as a result of 44 days of repeatedly fumbling the bag. They’re wrong. Liz Truss was sporting the smug, giddy beam of a job well done.
