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UK: Truss out, lettuce see what comes next?
In the end, poor Liz Truss didn’t even outlast that head of lettuce. At best, she stuck it out for barely four “Scaramuccis.” There are many ways to clock the downfall of the UK prime minister, who resigned on Thursday morning after just 45 days in office, marking the shortest premiership in British history.
Now the UK, which has already had three PMs in as many years, will have had three in less than two months. For a European country that’s not Italy, that’s a lot. And there is no guarantee that things will calm down anytime soon.
“A total and utter shambles, just complete carnage,” is how Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe research at Eurasia Group, described it mildly.
To refresh: Truss — a Thatcherite chosen by Tory party members to succeed Boris Johnson after his own scandal-driven resignation — got into trouble fast with a major tax cut proposal. It was meant to spur economic growth in an early 1980s kind of way, but fears about its fiscal impact on the UK meant it spooked financial markets in more of a late 2000s kind of way. The pound got crushed so badly that alarm bells rang at the IMF.
Although she shelved the proposal and fired her chancellor for good measure, Truss was unable to stop the bleeding politically, and out came the knives. After the loss of another key official earlier this week, the writing was on the wall — by Thursday morning, Truss simply read it aloud.
Who comes next? Truss pledged that a successor would be in place within seven days. There are thought to be three frontrunners at the moment:
- Rishi Sunak, a centrist technocrat and former chancellor of the exchequer who lost to Truss in the last selection process and openly opposed her tax cut proposals.
- Former Foreign Secretary Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the lower house who finished third behind Truss and Sunak.
- Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, a fiercely anti-immigrant politician popular among the Tory party’s broader membership.
Current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has ruled out competing and will stay in his post. He is, after all, due to present a full fiscal plan on Oct. 31. Boris Johnson’s name has also come up — he’s still popular with the party’s base — but Rahman says that while he has some momentum, the former PM may still have too many enemies among party MPs to mount a comeback for now.
Who chooses? The Tories have to work out a succession process that includes party MPs as well as the 170,000 or so party members among the public.
But the politics of those two groups are very different. Conservative Party members nationwide tend to be older, whiter, maler, and much more conservative than the party’s MPs in Parliament.
“If they have a say,” says Rahman, “it moves the center of gravity away from the centrist candidates and much more towards the extremes.” That would hurt Sunak and Mourdant, while opening a path for Braverman.
Tory leaders in parliament have said they will “consult” with Tory party members, but as of this writing, it’s unclear what that means. It could mean agreeing on a list of candidates and presenting it to party members for an online vote. There are also rumors of a “coronation” deal in which the second-place vote-getter among Tory MPs steps aside, all but eliminating the chance for the broader party membership to have a say.
Tory leadership is in a bind: To stabilize the UK’s financial situation, party leaders will want to hand the reins to a safe, centrist pair of hands. But marginalizing party members could provoke a backlash that cripples the Tories and courts further political upheaval.
Buckle up: The next head of lettuce — or 0.7 Scaramuccis if you will — is going to be a wild one in the UK.
For more on this, check out Ian Bremmer’s Quick Take on the “shortest-lived, most shambolic premiership in British history” here.This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.
Liz Truss arrives for the announcement of Britain's next Prime Minister at The Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London.
What We're Watching: Liz beats Rishi, Chile rejects charter change, Trump wins DOJ probe delay
Meet the UK's new PM
As expected, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss won the Conservative Party leadership race on Monday and will become the next British PM, replacing the disgraced Boris Johnson. Truss — a political chameleon who's popular with the Tory base — beat former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, a moderate technocrat, by a comfortable margin of 57% of party member votes. She now faces tough challenges at home and abroad. First, a looming recession compounded by a cost-of-living crisis and an energy crunch. Truss, who fancies herself as a modern Margaret Thatcher, plans to announce big tax cuts and perhaps a temporary freeze on energy bills for the most vulnerable Brits — which her economic guru has warned would be fiscally irresponsible. Second, a likely collision course with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol. Brace for rocky times ahead as Truss tries to convince Brussels to renegotiate the post-Brexit trade deal, which scrapped a hard border between Northern Ireland, part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state. (No surprise then that Brussels is hardly looking forward to her moving into No. 10 Downing St.) On Tuesday, Truss will travel to Scotland to meet with Queen Elizabeth II, who as per tradition will ask her to form a government at the monarch's Balmoral summer residence.
Chileans say "no" to new constitution
On Sunday, Chileans gave a resounding thumbs down to the new constitution planned to replace the current Pinochet-era charter. Almost 62% of those who voted in a referendum rejected the proposed text, which would have expanded the role of the state in the economy, recognized Indigenous rights, enforced gender parity in public institutions, and required the government to protect the environment. Although more than three-quarters of Chileans voted in October 2020 to get a new constitution, this draft failed to get majority support because many viewed it as too complicated, long (388 articles), and above all progressive. The "no" victory is a major blow to leftist President Gabriel Boric, a big supporter of the referendum whose approval rating has plunged since he was elected five months ago. Boric now says he wants to call another constituent election; to do that, though, he'll need to negotiate in Congress with the center-right opposition, which will leverage the result to influence the process. Still, Chileans may have turned down this charter, but the popular appetite for a new one hasn’t died down — and politicians dragging their feet could lead to social unrest like the 2019 mass protests that triggered the first referendum.
Trump gets his "master"
Challenging the ongoing Department of Justice investigation over his alleged obstruction of justice, Donald Trump scored a legal victory on Monday, when a federal judge granted the former US president's request to appoint a “special master” – a third-party arbiter – to decide if any of the documents seized by the Feds when they searched his Mar-a-Lago residence are covered by executive privilege. (The DOJ opposes this on the legal grounds that the highly classified records, including many labeled "Top Secret," don’t belong to Trump.) Judge Aileen Cannon — appointed by the former president and confirmed by the Senate just days before the 2020 presidential election — wrote in her judgment that while there was no sign of "callous disregard" for Trump's constitutional rights, among the documents taken on Aug. 8 from his Florida residence were some of the former president's medical and tax documents, and that warrants a “brief pause” in the investigation. The order will delay the DOJ’s probe at least until Friday, the deadline set for both the prosecution and the defense to propose their candidates for arbiter.Conservative Party leadership debate between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak
Is Truss pulling away?
The race to become the UK’s next prime minister has reached a crucial moment.
Though one new poll suggests Rishi Sunak may have cut into her sizeable lead, Liz Truss is still considered the likeliest choice to win the nationwide vote of Conservative Party members to lead the party and serve as PM, at least until the next national elections. A crucial endorsement from former rival Penny Mordaunt has boosted Truss still further.
The final result won’t be announced until September 5, but Sunak knows this week will be critical for the outcome. “Conservative Party voters tend to send their ballot papers back as quickly as possible,” says Eurasia Group’s top Europe analyst Mujtaba Rahman, and senior party officials hoping for cabinet posts can shape voter perceptions of the race with early endorsement of the likely winner – as former leadership rival Tom Tugendhat and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace have recently done. Many of the 160,000 Conservative Party voters, looking ahead to August holidays, may stop paying attention after this week’s head-to-head debate. “Unless Sunak can use public appearances this week and a televised debate on Thursday to slow her momentum,” Rahman says, “Truss looks to be headed for Number 10 [Downing Street].”
The frontrunner: Truss is a talented political veteran who has served as both post-Brexit international trade secretary and foreign minister. Her supporters say she’s “Boris without the baggage,” a team player untainted by the scandals that brought down outgoing prime minister Boris Johnson. Her critics claim she’s a politician without principle. During the 2016 Brexit referendum, she voted for the UK to remain within the EU, but the opportunity to serve in Johnson’s government led her to become a hardline Brexiteer.
That ideological flexibility has so far served her well in this race. “Though she’s the UK’s longest continuously serving cabinet minister,” Rahman notes, “Truss has managed to present herself as the change candidate while casting Sunak as the status-quo option.”
Sunak’s slide: The eldest son of Indian immigrants, best known for serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Britain’s chief financial officer, isn’t giving up. His backers say many voters remain persuadable. One recent poll has him well within striking distance, and Truss can still help by committing an unforced error or two.
Though he’s attacked Truss’s crowd-pleasing promises of tax cuts in a time of already high inflation as “fairytale economics,” he’s now proposed tax cuts of his own, though more modest and rolled out over several years. Sunak has also begun to echo her condemnations of “woke nonsense” to broaden his appeal among culture war conservatives. He continues to insist he’s more likely than Truss to lead the Conservative Party to a national election victory.
If Sunak can’t boost his poll numbers soon, he’ll likely face pressure from party heavyweights to quit the race and endorse Truss for the sake of party unity. So far, he shows no signs of searching for a graceful exit, but the sense of urgency within his campaign continues to rise.
Boris Johnson is likely to face another no-confidence vote soon
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Boris Johnson survives no-confidence vote, but are his days as prime minister still numbered?
Yeah. On balance, I think you're still going to see another no-confidence vote. The rules in the Tory Party executive committee say you can't, but they can change the rules. And because the vote was this close and because there is such opposition with the scandals that he continues to drive, I think the likelihood that you end up with another no-confidence vote in coming months is actually pretty high. So on balance, yeah, I still think his days are numbered. He's holding on by a thread. Good news though, is that he's less likely to cause trouble over Northern Ireland-Ireland border given how weak he is right now. So the Europeans at least are resting a little easily.
Despite boycotts and exclusions, is the Summit of the Americas still relevant?
It's not the most relevant right now. I mean, Biden's Asia trip was very important. Biden's Middle East trip coming up, which will be his first trip to Saudi Arabia, very important, especially with energy prices where they are. The NATO and G7 Summits, given the importance of the Russia war in Ukraine, that's more. I mean, the Summit of the Americas is kind of the forgotten event and even more so because Lopez Obrador has decided not to show up in part because foreign policy doesn't really matter to his domestic constituency and his popularity, which continues to be pretty high in Mexico. Also, because the Americans just don't have a trade agenda. And in the case of Indo-Pac there's a lot of other stuff to talk about so a weak trade framework is okay. But in Latin America, it's mostly about trade and there, there's just not much to talk about. And on the refugee and migration issue, if you don't have the Central American countries there in the Triangle, well, then you have nothing to negotiate. So yeah, this is going to be kind of a non issue. And if Latin America really did matter to American voters, Biden would get punished for it.
Are mass shootings a global humanitarian threat?
I mean, horrible to see in the headlines and certainly the over 50 that have just died in Nigeria from a mass shooting is an abomination to see in the news. But on balance, no. I would say this is really a United States problem. And the gun violence that we continue to see in the United States is, of course, something that is driving an enormous amount of headlines, an enormous amount of feeling of political sort of impotence. But, I see mass shootings in the US still as the way we saw crack cocaine in the '80s and '90s, which is a really horrible thing that most people in power don't really think affect them, and so there's a lot of performative politics and response but not a lot of willingness to take on vested interests. And as a consequence, we keep seeing it happen.
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Brexit: Holiday Cheer and Political Betrayal
Facing almost certain defeat for the Brexit deal she spent over two years negotiating, British Prime Minister Theresa May now faces an even more immediate challenge: rebellion from within. Ms. May will face a motion of no confidence tonight after 48 members of her Tory party opted to contest her leadership.
Pro-Brexit members of her Tory party have been trying to gather support to topple May for almost a month, but revolt gathered steam after she failed to even bring a vote on her exit deal earlier this week.
To survive as prime minister, May needs to secure a majority of votes (158 out of 315 MPs) from within her party. Balloting will take place in secret–heightening speculation that those too tepid to come out against her in public will willingly do so under the cloak of anonymity. If May loses, a leadership election will play out over the coming weeks to replace her as prime minister. If she wins, party rules say she can't be challenged for another year.
The attempt to oust May is the final shot for the rebellious wing of the Tory party which favors a deeper split from the EU. If only because of its desperation, it may be doomed to fail. But even if May survives she'll do so weakened and without a clear path toward delivering on Brexit.
A holiday kicker: The vote of no confidence is scheduled to take place just hours after the Tory party's yearly Christmas party. Come for the holiday cheer, stay for the political betrayal.