Global media has reacted with shock and concern over the dramatic end of Liz Truss’s six-week stint as British prime minister after she resigned for failing to deliver on the mandate for which she was elected.
Editorials called Ms Truss’s 44 days of leadership a “political death spiral” and said there were lessons in it for other domestic governments, while publications in more critical countries pulled no punches over her increasingly chaotic leadership.
The Washington Post, in its editorial titledWhy Liz Truss resigned as U.K. prime minister: A guide to the chaos, said her leadership was a “disastrous series of self-inflicted wounds — which turned into a political death spiral”.
It said Britain was looking to “right itself after Truss” because the country “looks increasingly like an isolated Atlantic island state” instead of an international player. It also appeared to leer at the current condition of the UK and said: “Britain should be more than an exporter of royal gossip and lurid political news.”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial said the fall of Ms Truss has lessons for domestic US politics in a piece titled The Tory warning to US Republicans.
It said Ms Truss was “made the scapegoat for failed tax-and-spend policies” and she resigned as prime minister “after a fiasco of a premiership, but the fault is far from hers alone”.
A viral and brutal livestream that led to a bizarre competition to see if Ms Truss’s premiership could outlast a lettuce with a wig, found a mention in international newspapers as well.
The New York Times wrote: “Her agenda had floundered, her own party had turned on her and commentators widely speculated on whether she could outlast a head of lettuce. She couldn’t.”
The Daily Star, which invented the brutal comedy contest, wrote Lettuce Rejoice on its cover along with a mock-up of a grinning green lettuce wearing a blond wig and a crown.
“Plucky Daily Star veg outlasts Lettuce Liz as she wilts in political heat,” read the subhead on the cover.
Billing it a “Brit-quake”, German tabloid Bild said the “head of lettuce is having a big party now”.
While Russia’s leadership offered a scathing analysis of British politics, Russian state news agency Ria Novosti said Ms Truss was forced to quit because of “a squall of criticism as a result of her new plan to support the economy, and fears that to realise it the government would increase the national debt”.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman said Britain had “never known such a disgrace of a prime minister”.
The Financial Times’s international edition published an editorial titled The Shattering of the UK’s credibility.
“By the end of October, the UK will have had three prime ministers in eight weeks, two of whom have come to power without a general election. The six short weeks of Liz Truss’s premiership trashed not only the UK’s economic standing but also its reputation for political stability,” the paper stated.
“No one, bar a few thousand party members, voted for that. The prospect of yet another Conservative prime minister chosen without a general election ignores not only the UK’s growing democratic deficit but also the lack of competence displayed by its woeful government,” it argued.
In Europe, the fiasco made it to the front page of Denmark’s daily broadsheet Jyllands-Posten with the headline From triumph to meltdown.
In more damaging comments, The Irish Times called it “a low moment in the history of British politics” and said the “mother of parliaments has been reduced to a bad joke, its constitution a laughing stock”.
“A prime minister is normally supposed to stand for something. Truss in Downing Street today stood for nothing,” it added.
France’s Le Figaro called Ms Truss’s resignation a “descent into hell”.
“She will go down as the most short-lived prime minister in contemporary history, with just 44 days in office during which she deepened the economic hardship of millions of Britons, weakened her country’s image internationally and depleted what was left of unity in a conservative party weakened after 12 years in power,” it added.
Spanish newspaper El Pais minced no words as it said Ms Truss was a “prime minister devoid of content, without a program to defend, incapable of effectively communicating”.
“The fiasco of Wednesday’s vote on a booby-trapped motion by the Labour opposition made matters worse. Shaking, shoving and shouting among Tory MPs , forced to vote against their will on an issue as controversial as fracking to show their loyalty to a government that was falling apart minute by minute,” it added.
Rupert Murdoch-owned The Australian newspaper declared the Tories had paved the way for a Labour government.
“As an influential power and key member of the Western alliance, Britain deserves and needs better. The economic and political instability wrought by Ms Truss and her party has been highly damaging. It has handed Labour a path to power that it has not had for many years,” the paper said.
The Independent has launched a petition calling for a general election.
It is a simple and fundamental principle that the government derives its democratic legitimacy from the people. The future of the country must not be decided by plotting and U-turns at Westminster; it must be decided by the people in a general election. And for this reason The Independent is calling for an election to be held. Have your say and sign our election petition by clicking here.
