At the moment, British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has barely been in office a month, is in a race with a lettuce to see who can last longer. 

This comedic spectacle perfectly embodies the state of British politics for the past year: chaos. Since the scandal-ridden Boris Johnson was finally forced to resign in July, the Conservative Party has struggled to find its footing. A highly contested leadership election ended with Liz Truss, the Johnson loyalist, defeating Rishi Sunak in the membership vote, despite Sunak being favored choice among the members of Parliament. 

Since Liz Truss assumed office on September 6th of this year, British affairs have only worsened from an already grim situation. The country had been facing a cost of living crisis, an energy crisis, and political scandal for months. When Truss assumed office, some were optimistic that this change in leadership would be able to change course. This has not been the case.

Kwasi Kwarteng, Truss’ Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced the government’s mini-budget on September 23rd. The budget consisted of tax cuts, especially on the nation’s wealthiest, without any way to pay for them. This large amount of deficit spending spooked the markets, dropping the value of the British pound to $1.07 dollars, the lowest the currency has dipped since 1985. This drop of almost 10 cents might seem insignificant, but for an almost 3 trillion dollar economy, it has been catastrophic. The chaos has prompted the Conservatives to fall off a cliff: according to Politico, Labour has a 26-point lead over the Conservatives, which is the largest lead for any political party in the history of the poll tracker. 

Truss’s response to attempt to rectify the situation was to fire Kwarteng, who was only enacting her own policies, and to make several drastic changes in policies, which has given her government a large amount of embarrassment. Truss’s replacement for Kwarteng, Jeremy Hunt, who is highly respected within his own party, has almost entirely u-turned Truss’s economic policies thus far. 

This has caused Conservative member of Parliament, Sir Roger Gale, to state that Jeremy Hunt is now “de facto Prime Minister.” Despite the fact that the Conservative party’s rules state that a Prime Minister is safe from a leadership challenge for their first year in office, Conservative members of Parliament are already trying to depose her, with the Daily Mail reporting that Liz Truss might be gone within the week. 

Thus, it is up in the air whether or not Truss will be the winner of the race, and it is very likely that the United Kingdom will soon have their 3rd Prime Minister in a year.