Boris Johnson’s resignation in July was the very opposite of a national tragedy. But Liz Truss’s departure on Thursday was a moment of national farce. Never has a prime minister been less suited to the job than she was. Never has a resignation been more needed by the country. Having boasted that she was not a quitter, Ms Truss threw in the towel a day later. The about-turn was par for the course for the most belligerently incompetent British prime ministership in modern, and perhaps any other, times. She departs humiliated, after 45 days, the shortest serving prime minister in British history. But she deserved to go.
Ms Truss’s Downing Street announcement followed a torrid 24 hours of Conservative mayhem, unmistakably the death throes of a collapsing regime. The then home secretary, Suella Braverman, was sacked after an argument about looser immigration controls. Conservative MPs were then reduced to dismayed disarray over how to vote on a Labour motion against fracking. After that, it was simply a matter of time. On Thursday, the backbench 1922 Committee chair, Sir Graham Brady, went to No 10 to say that the game was up for Ms Truss’s inept and tin-eared leadership.
