Liz Truss resigns: Tories ignore growing calls for early elections

A petition to the British parliament, floated before Truss’s calamitous U-turns, demanding early elections gathered 657,586 signatures by Thursday evening, with the number of signatories continuing to rise.

NEW DELHI: Within two months of Boris Johnson’s exit, and exactly 45 days since she was appointed before steering the UK through an economic crisis, Liz Truss on Thursday resigned as prime minister, consigning the ruling Conservative Party to another leadership contest to elect a new premier, despite facing growing calls to call a general election instead.

Turmoil in UK government after Liz Truss’s resignation from the PM’s post is adding to the delay. (AP)

Truss, who narrowly beat out former finance minister Rishi Sunak in September, won the role to general apathy among the British public. According to a YouGov poll published on the day she won the Conservative Party race, 12% of people thought she’d be “good” or “great” as prime minister, while 52% thought she’d be “poor” or “terrible” in the role.

But on Wednesday, after weeks of a free-fall in Britain’s currency and equity markets that eventually prompted Truss to make a U-turn on her economic agenda, her approval ratings took an even bigger beating. A YouGov poll showed her net favourability at -70, making her one of the most unpopular prime ministers of the UK.

“Liz Truss has been removed by the Conservative Party that chose her to be Prime Minister just 45 days ago. This happened because she did not call a general election to get a personal mandate from the people. It will happen again if the Conservative Party another Leader without a general election again. Without one we will have unprecedented three UK prime ministers and five chancellors in four months with no democratic process,” Lloyd Hardy, founder of the pro-democracy group Gov2.UK, told HT following Truss’s resignation.

Truss is the fourth British PM in six years who has been elected to lead the party by the Tory Party members and not the general public. Hardy said that with polling showing the Conservative Party 30 points behind the opposition Labour Party, “they will be all but wiped out. The Democratic majority does not want them.”

“We cannot have a handful of Tory MPs deciding who runs the UK, this is simply not democracy. The Conservative Party have broken their manifesto pledges again and again as home secretary Suella Braverman stated in her resignation letter and have changed their leader and policies multiple times. We need a general election for the people to have a say. Nobody who values democracy would be against that,” Hardy added.

A petition to the British parliament, floated before Truss’s calamitous U-turns, demanding early elections gathered 657,586 signatures by Thursday evening, with the number of signatories continuing to rise. Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, reiterated the party’s call for elections immediately after Truss resigned on Thursday. Truss in the past resisted calls for general elections. Ppinion polls that show an early election could result in the Tories being annihilated after 12 years in power.