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UK: Tories kick off new leadership race despite growing calls for early elections
Truss is the fourth British prime minister in six years who has been elected to lead the party by the Tory Party members and not the general public
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.
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 prime minister in six years who has been elected to lead the party by the Tory 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.
“The Tories cannot respond to their latest shambles by yet again simply clicking their fingers and shuffling the people at the top without the consent of the British people. We need a general election -- now,” the Labour leader said.
“After 12 years of Tory failure, the British people deserve so much better than this revolving door of chaos.
“Now, they have crashed the economy so badly that people are facing £500 ($563) a month extra on their mortgages. The damage they have done will take years to fix.
“Each one of these crises was made in Downing Street but paid for by the British public. Each one has left our country weaker and worse off,” he said.
Truss in the past resisted calls for general elections.
“The last thing we need is a general election,” she said last week.
The key reason why could be in the opinion polls that show an early election could result in the Tories being annihilated after 12 consecutive years in power. A poll published on Monday by Redfield and Wilton Strategies gave the Labour Party a 36-point lead if an election were held immediately.
Within minutes of Truss’s resignation speech on Thursday, Sky news reported that Sunak and Penny Mordaunt - another favourite in the race to replace Johnson - will run again for the premiership. However, several media reports, including the BBC said, finance minister Jeremy Hunt had decided not to take part in the race.
Unlike the last time, when it took more than a month, this time the leadership contest is going to last only a week. The contest to replace her will be concluded by October 28, according to 1922 committee chair Graham Brady.
