Truss, Elizabeth (1975- )

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      Liz Truss’s Quick Resignation Spurs Anger and Bewilderment Among Britons

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      The news of the prime minister’s resignation whipsawed many in Britain, a country already dealing with spiraling inflation and still grappling with the departure of Boris Johnson.LONDON — The fast-paced developments that culminated Thursday with the resignation of Prime Minister Liz Truss left many Britons in a state of anger and alarm about their country’s future. “We are in an economic crisis, a political crisis, a food crisis — an everything crisis,” said Cristian Cretu, a gas engineer. “Whoever is going to replace her, I don’t think they will make a difference.”Others were dumbfounded at her sudden resignation.“Are you serious?” said Michael Debas, an Uber driver, as he heard the news of Ms. Truss’s resignation on the radio. “This is just crazy. What’s going on in this country?” he said as he began to count the list of Britain’s recent prime ministers on his fingers.In pubs and on the streets of London, as news of the turmoil flashed across screens and cellphones and blared over radios, Britons who had already stared down a year of economic and political turmoil met the latest developments with anxiety and concern about what comes next.“I’m not surprised at all,” Diana Godwin, 61, said of the resignation as she worked at her fruit and vegetable stall in Brixton, in South London. “But who wants to throw their hat into the ring now?”“When they lose the next election, that one will have to be sacked, too,” she said of the governing Conservatives and whoever becomes Britain’s next leader.With the government in chaos, Britons are wondering what the instability atop the government could portend for a country battling double-digit inflation and widening economic malaise.“It feels like the economy could collapse at any moment,” Edward Brusnahan, 53, said. He was in the middle of trying to refinance his apartment so that he could move away from the city. But with the mortgage market disrupted and rates rising sharply, it was no easy task.Consumer prices had risen by 10.1 percent in September from a year earlier, propelled by food prices that soared 14.5 percent in September.Sam Bush for The New York TimesHe said that political leaders had “no vision” to address the nation’s mounting problems and that Britain seemed to be transgressing back to the painful economic malaise of the 1970s.“We’re lurching from crisis to crisis,” he said. Nevertheless, he called Ms. Truss’s decision to quit “the right decision,” saying, “Hopefully they’ll make a better choice this time.”In poorer parts of London, where the pain of rising costs has been more pronounced, there was anger, frustration and exhaustion with the chaos in Britain’s government and the worsening economic news.“I’ve just closed my ears to it all,” said Ms. Godwin, who said that her energy bills had more than doubled recently. “Anyone with any common decency should step down.”“They don’t give a damn about normal, working people,” she added.That sense of government incompetency has also bled into an all-consuming worry about how bad Britain’s economic crisis could get. On Wednesday, the government announced that consumer prices had risen by 10.1 percent in September from a year earlier, propelled by food prices that soared 14.5 percent in Septem“Everything — the cost of living — is too much,” said James Hill, 32, who was fixing an elevator on Thursday morning. With two young children, Mr. Hill said he was working as much overtime as he could, which meant less time with his family.Customers at the clothing stall that Sevin Singh, 39, owns have all but dried up amid Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, and he says he now worries about the future of the 20-year-old family business.Britons who had already stared down a year of economic and political turmoil met the latest developments with anxiety and concern about what comes next.Sam Bush for The New York Times“The government don’t have control anymore. Every day something changes,” said Mr. Singh, as he busied himself on a rainy Thursday morning tending to his collection of women’s turbans and dashiki dresses. Of Ms. Truss, he said, “She was just not good enough for the job, and we urgently need someone who is.”Christopher Egege, who had spent the past few months abroad, returned to London and was stunned at how far prices for everything from eggs to sauces and other foodstuffs had been marked up. If things did not improve, Mr. Egege said he would consider moving back overseas in a few months.Mr. Egege said he believed that Rishi Sunak, Britain’s former chancellor of the Exchequer beaten by Ms. Truss, should have become prime minister. “I don’t understand why they voted for her,” he said referring to Ms. Truss. “Is it down to racism?” (Mr. Sunak’s parents are of Indian heritage.)Ghifftie Bonsu, 47, who was opening her wig shop along with her young son, said she had become numb to Britain’s myriad crises. Customers have dwindled amid the country’s inflationary crisis, and she now worries about the businesses’ future.“I don’t even know where to start,” Ms. Bonsu said of the political turmoil. “They should pick people who are ready and can do the job.” More

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      What Happened With Liz Truss in Britain? A Guide to the Basics.

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      A little over six weeks into her leadership, the British prime minister said she would resign.LONDON — The rapid political collapse of Liz Truss ended as she announced her resignation on Thursday, a little more than six weeks after she became Britain’s leader. 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.She had pledged to shoulder through the turmoil despite widespread calls for her resignation. But minute by minute the heat on her grew until there was no path out.If you need to get caught up, here is a guide to the basics.Who is Liz Truss and how did she become prime minister?Ms. Truss was anointed on Sept. 6 to replace Boris Johnson, who was elected by voters in 2019 but who flamed out in spectacular fashion after a series of scandals, forcing him to step down in July.The general public did not elect Ms. Truss — instead, she won a leadership contest among members of her Conservative Party. To replace Mr. Johnson, the party’s members of Parliament narrowed a field of candidates to two, who were then put up to a vote by about 160,000 dues-paying party members. (They’re an unrepresentative group of the nation’s 67 million residents, far more likely to be male, older, middle-class and white.)Ms. Truss, 47, had been Mr. Johnson’s hawkish foreign secretary, a free-market champion and eventual supporter of Brexit (after she changed her mind), winning over the right flank of the party despite her more moderate past. (Before joining the Conservative Party, she was a member of the centrist Liberal Democrats when she was a student at Oxford University.)How did it start to come undone?She was never going to have it easy. As Ms. Truss entered office, the nation was staring down a calamitous economic picture, highlighted by energy bills that were predicted to jump 80 percent in October and jump again in January. It threatened to send millions of Britons, already reeling from inflation and other challenges, spiraling into destitution, unable to heat or power their homes.So it was unwelcome news when her signature economic plans immediately made things worse.Her announced plans for tax cuts, deregulation and borrowing so alarmed global investors that the value of the British pound sank to a record low against the U.S. dollar. The Bank of England stepped in to prop up government bonds, an extraordinary intervention to calm the markets.The response left no doubt that her free-market ambitions were untenable. In a humiliating reversal, she was forced to reverse virtually all of the tax cuts this week, including a much-criticized one on high earners. She fired Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor of the Exchequer who was the architect of the plan and a close ally, and adopted economic policies favored by the opposition Labour party.“You cannot engage in the sort of U-turn that she has engaged in and retain your political credibility,” said Jon Tonge, a professor of politics at the University of Liverpool.How did her tenure come under threat?Her concessions did little to mollify a growing rebellion from within her own party, which had the power to topple her in much the same way it toppled Mr. Johnson.The Conservatives — also known as Tories — had seen their popularity decline in public opinion polls after Mr. Johnson’s scandals, and their numbers cratered to staggering new lows as Ms. Truss stumbled. A Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll this week revealed the lowest approval rating it had ever recorded for a prime minister, with 70 percent disapproving of Ms. Truss, including 67 percent of Conservatives.If a general election were held today, 56 percent would vote for Labour while 20 percent would vote Conservative, the poll found.The Conservative Party’s discontent with Ms. Truss crescendoed in turn, and she was enveloped with a palpable sense of crisis. On Wednesday, it boiled into a frantic fight for her survival — “I’m a fighter and not a quitter,” she said while being grilled by members of Parliament.Then even more chaos broke out. Suella Braverman, Britain’s interior minister, stepped down after an email breach, but took a swipe at Ms. Truss in her resignation letter, saying she had “concerns about the direction of this government.” A vote on fracking in Parliament turned into a reported scene of bullying, shouting, physical manhandling and tears. More Conservative members of Parliament openly called for Ms. Truss to step down. Rumors swirled of high-profile resignations. It was difficult to keep up.“In short, it is total, absolute, abject chaos,” a news announcer said on iTV. Charles Walker, a Conservative lawmaker, did not hold back in an interview on BBC.On Thursday, she said she had handed her resignation to the king, with a new leadership election planned within a week.What comes next?Ms. Truss will remain prime minister until her successor is chosen. (Here are the likely front-runners.) In her resignation remarks, Ms. Truss said a leadership election would be completed in the next week, bringing Britain its second unelected leader in a row.The next general election — when the entire public can participate, and the next opportunity for Labour to take control — is not scheduled until January 2025 at the latest. A Conservative leader could call for one earlier, but they would have little reason to do so imminently since polls indicate the party would be wiped out by Labour.Mr. Tonge said one advantage Conservatives have is time — the party could theoretically regain credibility if the economy recovers in the following years, he said.“I don’t think that changing the leader will necessarily save the Conservatives,” he said. “But you can engage in damage limitation by doing so.” More

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      Lessons From Liz Truss’s Handling of U.K. Inflation

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      The sharp policy U-turn by Liz Truss, Britain’s prime minister, reveals the perils of taking the wrong path in the fight against scalding inflation.Government leaders in the West are struggling with rising inflation, slowing growth, and anxious electorates worried about winter and high energy bills. But Liz Truss, Britain’s prime minister, is the only one who devised an economic plan that unnerved financial markets, drew the ire of global leaders and the public and undermined her political standing.On Friday, battered by savage criticism, she retreated. Ms. Truss fired her top finance official, Kwasi Kwarteng, for creating precisely the package of unfunded tax cuts, billion-dollar spending programs and deregulation that she had asked for.She reinstated a scheduled increase in corporate taxes to 25 percent from 19 percent, a rise she had previously opposed. That announcement came on top of backtracking last week on her proposal to eliminate the top 45 percent income tax on the highest earners. The prime minister, in office a little over five weeks, also promised that spending would grow less rapidly than proposed, although no specifics were offered.The drama is still playing out, and it’s unclear if the Truss government will survive.In the United States, President Biden, while waging his own political battles over gas prices and inflation, has not proposed anything like the kind of policies that Ms. Truss’s government attempted, nor have any other leaders in Europe.Still, for European governments whose economies are suffering greatly from shocks and energy price surges caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, there are timely lessons from the debacle playing out in London.One of the strongest was delivered early on by the International Monetary Fund: Don’t undermine your own central bankers. The I.M.F., which usually reserves such scoldings for developing nations, on Thursday doubled down on its message. “Don’t prolong the pain,” Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director, admonished.How to blunt the impact of inflation on the most vulnerable without further stoking inflation is the dilemma that every government is confronting.The Bank of England in London has aggressively tried to slow the sharp rise in prices by slowing the British economy.Alberto Pezzali/Associated Press“That is the question of the hour,” said Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University who was attending the annual meetings of the World Bank and I.M.F. in Washington this week.Tension between the fiscal spending policies proposed by a government and the monetary policies controlled by central banks is not unusual. At the moment, though, central bankers are engaged in delicate policy maneuvers in the fight against a level of inflation not seen in decades. With the rate in Britain nearing 10 percent, the Bank of England has moved aggressively to slow down climbing prices through a series of interest rate increases aimed at crimping consumer and business spending.Any expansion of government spending is going to interfere with that aim to some degree, but Ms. Truss’s plan was far too big and too ill defined, Mr. Prasad said.“Measures to help households hit hard by energy increases, by themselves, would not have created that much of a stir,” he said. Many other countries have proposed exactly that. And the European Union has proposed a windfall tax on energy profits to help finance those subsidies.Ms. Truss, instead of coming up with a way to pay for energy assistance, pushed to eliminate a corporate tax increase and cut income taxes for the wealthiest segment of the population. The result was a reduction in government revenue and a ballooning of Britain’s debt.“Overall, the package did not have much clarity in terms of how it would support the economy in the short run without raising inflation,” Mr. Prasad said.By contrast, Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, cited the way governments and central banks worked in tandem when the pandemic struck in 2020 to keep economies from collapsing, issuing vast amounts of public debt.“Central banks printed every single dollar, euro and pound that governments spent” to support households and businesses because of the Covid crisis, Mr. Vistesen said. But now the circumstances have changed, and inflation is setting economies aflame.The actions of the Federal Reserve in the United States illustrate the switch central banks have made: In the harrowing early weeks of the global outbreak of the coronavirus, the Fed embarked on an extraordinary program to stimulate the economy and stabilize markets. This year, the Fed has been swiftly raising interest rates in a bid to slow growth.Both the United States and eurozone countries have somewhat more wiggle room than Britain, because the dollar and the euro are much more widely used around the world as currencies held in reserve than the British pound.Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s former chancellor of the Exchequer, left 11 Downing Street after Ms. Truss fired him on Friday.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressEven so, European governments can help households and businesses get through an energy crisis, Mr. Vistesen said, but they can’t embark on an open-ended spending spree.They also need to take account of what is happening in other economies. The richest countries that make up the Group of 7 are essentially part of the same “monetary and fiscal convoy,” said Will Hutton, president of the Academy of Social Sciences. By championing a Thatcher-era blend of steep tax cuts and deregulation, he said, the Truss government strayed too far from the rest of the flotilla and the economic mainstream.The adherence to 1980s-era trickle-down verities also revealed the risks of sticking with outdated policies in the face of changing circumstances, said Diane Coyle, a ​​public policy professor at the University of Cambridge.“The situation in 1979 was very different,” Ms. Coyle said. “There were sclerotic high taxes and an overregulated economy, but not anymore.” Today, taxes in Britain are lower, and the economy is less regulated than the average member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of 38 major economies.“The character of the economy has changed,” she said. “Public investment in research and skills are more important.”In that sense, what was missing from Ms. Truss’s economic plan was as important as what was included. And what Britain is lacking, said Mariana Mazzucato, an economist at University College London, is a visionary public investment program like the trillion-dollar climate and digitalization plans adopted by the European Union or the climate and infrastructure program in the United States.A rate of Inflation nearing 10 percent in Britain has affected the price of groceries and how people spend their money.Alex Ingram for The New York Times“If you don’t have a growth plan, an industrial strategy innovation policy,” Ms. Mazzucato said, “then your economy won’t expand.”Both Ms. Mazzucato and Ms. Coyle emphasized that Britain had some specific economic handicaps that predated the Truss administration, including the 2016 vote to exit the European Union, a stubborn lack of productivity, anemic business investment, and lagging research and development.Still, Ms. Coyle offered some advice that referred pointedly to Ms. Truss. “I think the main lesson is: Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.” More

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      Why the British Pound Continues to Sink

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      Britain’s pound coin — rimmed in nickel and brass with an embossed image of Queen Elizabeth II at the center — could always be counted on to be significantly more valuable than the dollar.Such boasting rights effectively came to an end this week when the value of the pound sank to its lowest recorded level: £1 = $1.03 after falling more than 20 percent this year.The nearly one-to-one parity between the currencies sounded the close of a chapter in Britain’s history nearly as much as the metronomic footfalls of the procession that carried the queen’s funeral bier up the pavement to Windsor Castle.“The queen’s death for many people brought to an end a long era of which the soft power in the United Kingdom” was paramount, said Ian Goldin, professor of globalization and development at the University of Oxford. “The pound’s demise to its lowest level is sort of indicative of this broader decline in multiple dimensions.”The immediate cause of the pound’s alarming fall on Monday was the announcement of a spending and tax plan by Britain’s new Conservative government, which promised steep tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthiest individuals along with expensive measures to help blunt the painful rise in energy prices on consumers and businesses.The sense of crisis ramped up Wednesday when the Bank of England intervened, in a rare move, and warned of “material risk to U.K. financial stability” from the government’s plan. The central bank said it would start buying British government bonds “on whatever scale is necessary” to stem a sell-off in British debt.The Bank of England’s emergency action seemed at odds with its efforts that began months ago to try to slow the nearly 10 percent annual inflation rate, which has lifted the price of essentials like petrol and food to painful levels.Rising Inflation in BritainInflation Slows Slightly: Consumer prices are still rising at about the fastest pace in 40 years, despite a small drop to 9.9 percent in August.Interest Rates: On Sept. 22, the Bank of England raised its key rate by another half a percentage point, to 2.25 percent, as it tries to keep high inflation from becoming embedded in the nation’s economy.Energy Bills to Soar: Gas and electric charges for most British households are set to rise 80 percent this fall, further squeezing consumers and stoking inflation.Investor Worries: The financial markets have been grumbling with unease about Britain’s economic outlook. The government plan to freeze energy bills and cut taxes is not easing concerns.The swooning pound this week has carried an unmistakable political message, amounting to a no-confidence vote by the world’s financial community in the economic strategy proposed by Prime Minister Liz Truss and her chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng.To Mr. Goldin, the pound’s journey indicates a decline in economic and political influence that accelerated when Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016. In many respects, Britain already has the worst performing economy, aside from Russia, of the 38-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.“It’s just a question of time before it falls out of the top 10 economies in the world,” Mr. Goldin said. Britain ranks sixth, having been surpassed by India.Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, said this latest plunge had delivered a bracing blow to Britain’s standing. A series of “self-inflicted wounds,” including Brexit and the government’s latest spending plan, have accelerated the pound’s slide and further endangered London’s status as a global financial center.Dozens of currencies, including the euro, the Japanese yen and the Chinese renminbi, have slumped in recent weeks. Rising interest rates and a relatively bright economic outlook in the United States combined with turmoil in the global economy have made investments in dollars particularly appealing.But the revival by the Truss government of an extreme version of Thatcher and Reagan-era “trickle-down” economic policies elicited a brutal response.“The problem isn’t that the U.K. budget was inflationary,” wrote Dario Perkins, a managing director at TS Lombard, a research firm, on Twitter. “It’s that it was moronic.”To some, the pound’s journey indicates a decline in Britain’s economic and political influence.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesDuring the more than 1,000 years in which the pound sterling has reigned as Britain’s national currency, it has suffered its share of ups and downs. Its value in the modern era could never match the value of an actual pound of silver, which in the 10th century could buy 15 cows.Over the centuries, British leaders have often gone to extraordinary lengths to protect the pound’s value, viewing its strength as a sign of the country’s economic power and influence. King Henry I issued a decree in 1125 ordering that those who produced substandard currency “lose their right hand and be castrated.”In the 1960s, the Labour government under Harold Wilson so resisted devaluing the pound — then set at a fixed rate of $2.80, high enough to be holding back the British economy — that he ordered cabinet papers discussing the idea to be burned. In 1967, the government finally cut its value by 14 percent to $2.40.Other economic crises thrashed the pound. In the 1970s, when oil prices skyrocketed and Britain’s inflation rate topped 25 percent, the government was compelled to ask the International Monetary Fund for a $3.9 billion loan. In the mid-1980s, when high U.S. interest rates and a Reagan administration spending spree jacked up the dollar’s value, the pound fell to a then record low.The pound’s dominance has been waning since the end of World War II. Today, the global economy is experiencing a particularly tumultuous time as it recovers from the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, supply chain breakdowns, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an energy shortage and soaring inflation.As Richard Portes, an economics professor at London Business School, said, currency exchanges have enormous swings over time. The euro was worth 82 cents in its early days, he recalled, and people referred to it as a “toilet paper” currency. But by 2008, its value had doubled to $1.60.What might cause the pound to revive is not clear.The Truss government’s economic program has forcefully accelerated the pound’s slide — the latest in a series of what many economists consider egregious economic missteps that peaked with Brexit.Much depends on the Truss government.“The plunge in the pound is the result of policy choices, not some historical inevitability” said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “Whether this is a new, grim era or just an unfortunate interlude depends on whether they reverse course or are kicked out at the next election.”As it happens, the Bank of England is preparing to issue new pound bank notes and coins featuring King Charles III, at the very moment that the pound has dropped to record lows.“The death of the queen and the fall of the pound do seem jointly to signify decisively the end of an era,” Mr. Prasad of Cornell said. “These two events could be considered markers in a long historical procession in the British economy and the pound sterling becoming far less important than they once were.” More

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      Truss Takes a Bold Economic Gamble. Will It Sink Her Government?

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      Three weeks into her term, Prime Minister Liz Truss’s financial plans have thrown the markets and Britain’s currency into chaos and put her future in peril.LONDON — Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain campaigned as a tax cutter and champion of supply-side economics, and she won the race to replace her scandal-scarred predecessor, Boris Johnson. Now she has delivered that free-market agenda, and it may sink her government.Four days after Ms. Truss’s tax cuts and deregulatory plans stunned financial markets and threw the British pound into a tailspin, the prime minister’s political future looks increasingly precarious as well.Her Conservative Party is gripped by anxiety, with a new poll showing that the opposition Labour Party has taken a 17 percentage point lead over the Tories. It’s a treacherous place for a prime minister in only her third week on the job.Labour is seizing the moment to present itself as the party of fiscal responsibility. With some experts predicting the pound could tumble to parity with the dollar, economists and political analysts said the uncertainty over Britain’s economic path would continue to hang over the markets and Ms. Truss’s government.“It’s entirely possible she could be replaced before the next election,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, who is an expert on the Conservative Party. “It would be very, very difficult to conduct a full-blown leadership contest again, but I wouldn’t rule anything out.”That Ms. Truss should find herself in this predicament so soon after taking office attests to both the radical nature and awkward timing of her proposals. Cutting taxes at a time of near-double-digit inflation, when central banks in London and elsewhere are raising interest rates, was always going to mark Britain as an economic outlier.But the government compounded the shock last Friday when the chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, unexpectedly announced that the government would also abolish the top income tax rate of 45 percent applied to those earning more than 150,000 pounds, or about $164,000, a year.And Mr. Kwarteng did not submit the package to the scrutiny a government budget normally receives, deepening fears that the tax cuts, without corresponding spending cuts, will blow a hole in Britain’s public finances.Cutting taxes at a time of near-double-digit inflation, when central banks in London and worldwide are raising interest rates, has made Britain an economic outlier.Carl Court/Getty ImagesOn Tuesday, the pound stabilized briefly against the dollar, as did 10-year rates on British government bonds, though both began to gyrate later in the day after a senior official at the Bank of England signaled an aggressive rise in interest rates.The International Monetary Fund, which bailed out Britain in 1976, added to the deepening sense of anxiety when it urged the British government to reconsider the tax cuts. In a statement, it said the cuts would exacerbate inequality and lead to fiscal policy and monetary policy working at “cross purposes.”Rising Inflation in BritainInflation Slows Slightly: Consumer prices are still rising at about the fastest pace in 40 years, despite a small drop to 9.9 percent in August.Interest Rates: On Sept. 22, the Bank of England raised its key rate by another half a percentage point, to 2.25 percent, as it tries to keep high inflation from becoming embedded in the nation’s economy.Energy Bills to Soar: Gas and electric charges for most British households are set to rise 80 percent this fall, further squeezing consumers and stoking inflation.Investor Worries: The financial markets have been grumbling with unease about Britain’s economic outlook. The government plan to freeze energy bills and cut taxes is not easing concerns.Already, the specter of higher interest rates was causing the housing market to seize up. Two major British mortgage lenders announced that they would stop offering new loans because of the market volatility. Higher rates will hurt hundreds of thousands of homeowners who need to refinance fixed-term mortgages — property owners, analysts noted, who are the bedrock of the Conservative Party.“It’s not like the U.S., where people are on 30-year mortgages,” said Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London.An estimated 63 percent of mortgage holders have either floating rate mortgages or loans that will expire in the next two years. And the steep decline of the pound means that interest rates will have to rise even further than they would have merely to curb inflation.Ms. Truss, he said, could have taken a more cautious approach: rolling out the supply-side measures first, like plans to untangle Britain’s cumbersome residential planning rules and build more housing, which are hurdles to economic growth. Then, when inflationary pressures had eased, the government could have cut taxes.But that was never in the cards, Professor Portes said, because Ms. Truss and Mr. Kwarteng are free-market evangelists who ardently believe that cutting taxes will reignite growth, and because they have little more than two years to turn around the economy before they face voters in a general election.“This is ‘shock and awe,’” he said. “Truss, Kwarteng, and the people around them think they had to act quickly. The longer they wait, the more the resistance will build up.”Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer, announced tax cuts that some fear will blow a hole in Britain’s public finances.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersDuring the campaign, Ms. Truss modeled herself on Margaret Thatcher, who also announced a series of free-market measures after taking office as prime minister and endured a turbulent couple of years. Unlike Ms. Truss, though, Thatcher worried about curbing inflation and shoring up public finances; she even raised some taxes during a recession in 1981 before reducing them in later years.But Thatcher came in after an election victory over an exhausted Labour government, which gave her more time to weather the downturn and for her deregulatory measures to take effect. She also got a lift after Britain vanquished Argentina in the Falklands War in 1982, which uncorked a surge of patriotism.“Thatcher was thinking in 1979 that I only need to give voters something they like by 1982,” said Charles Moore, a former editor of The Daily Telegraph who wrote a three-volume biography of the former prime minister. “Liz Truss hasn’t got this amount of time.”The better analogy to Ms. Truss, he said, is Ronald Reagan, with his emphasis on tax cuts and other supply-side policies, as well as his relative lack of concern for their effect on public deficits. Like Thatcher, Reagan weathered a recession before the United States began growing again in 1983. And like her, he had a cushion before he had to face voters.Ms. Truss, by contrast, has taken office after 12 years of Conservative-led governments, and three years into Mr. Johnson’s tenure. She will have to call an election by the beginning of 2025, at the latest. The Labour Party, which had been divided by Brexit and internal disputes, has been galvanized by the new government’s chaotic start, in particular Mr. Kwarteng’s plan to cut the top tax rate, which has allowed Labour to stake out a clear contrast on issues of economic equity.Speaking at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, declared that the Conservatives “say they do not believe in redistribution. But they do — from the poor to the rich.”Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is seizing the moment to present itself as the party of fiscal responsibility.Henry Nicholls/ReutersLabour’s lead of 17 percentage points in a new poll by the market research firm, YouGov, is the largest advantage it has had over the Conservatives in two decades. The Tories won the support of just 28 percent of those surveyed, raising questions about its ability to hold on to its existing seats, according to Professor Bale.That forbidding political landscape only adds to the challenge facing Ms. Truss. For the tax cuts to have one of their desired effects — which is to encourage businesses to invest more — economists said companies would need some reassurance that the policy is not going to be reversed by a new government in two years.“This is a very inexperienced government swinging for the fences in a situation where Labour is the strong favorite in the next election, if they don’t swing too far left,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard. “If one believes that the tax cuts are going to be reversed under Labour, and that there is a high chance of a Labour government, why would they influence long-term investment?”Britain, Professor Rogoff said, was also rowing against much greater forces in the global economy. After years of low inflation and extremely low interest rates, the flood of public spending because of the coronavirus pandemic has brought back the scourge of inflation and a shift toward higher rates.“The verdict will almost certainly be that governments borrowed too much and should have raised taxes on the wealthy more,” he said.In the short term, Ms. Truss is likely to find herself increasingly at odds with the Bank of England. The bank was already expected to raise rates at its next meeting in November. On Tuesday, its chief economist, Huw Pill, said the government’s new fiscal policies would require a “significant monetary policy response.”Adam S. Posen, an American economist who once served on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, said, “The government’s policies are not only outrageously irresponsible, but they don’t seem to understand that the bank has to respond to these policies by raising interest rates a lot.”The Bank of England, like many other banks worldwide, is expected to raise rates at its meeting next month.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Posen, who is the president of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, likened Britain’s loss of credibility in the markets to that of Britain and other European countries in the 1970s and Latin American countries in the 1980s. The best course, he said, would be for the government to reverse its fiscal policy, though he said Ms. Truss and Mr. Kwarteng seemed “willfully committed to it.”Certainly, they have given no indication that they plan to back down. On Tuesday, Mr. Kwarteng told bankers and asset managers that he was confident the government’s plan would work.After the turmoil that led to Mr. Johnson’s ouster in July, and the protracted contest to replace him, few in the Conservative Party have the stomach to move against Ms. Truss now. But analysts note that the new prime minister has a shallow reservoir of support among lawmakers. Barely a third of them voted for her in the final ballot against her primary opponent, Rishi Sunak, and she won the subsequent vote among party members by a closer margin than expected.Taking note of the new YouGov poll, Huw Merriman, a Conservative lawmaker, may have spoken for many of his colleagues when he said on Twitter, “Those of us who backed Rishi Sunak lost the contest, but this poll suggests that the victor is losing our voters with policies we warned against.”“For the good of our country, and the livelihoods of everyone in our country,” he added, “I still hope to be proven wrong.” More

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      Truss Forms a Cabinet Diverse in Background but Not in Ideology

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      Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, has recruited cabinet members from diverse backgrounds, though her inner circle retains a hard Conservative edge.LONDON — One attended Britain’s most famous private high-school, Eton College, another is a top-drawer lawyer, and the third holds a senior rank as an Army reservist. The résumés of those handed the three top cabinet posts by Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, are typical of generations of high-achievers in her ruling Conservative Party.What is different is that none of the three are white.In choosing her top team, Ms. Truss has created a strikingly diverse cabinet. The country also has its first female deputy prime minister.“What is extraordinary is the pace of change, how this is already normal, and this isn’t contentious,” said Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a research institute that focuses on immigration, integration, race and identity. “There aren’t people going around saying ‘give us our country back.’”Still, Ms. Truss’s inner circle, while progressive in its ethnic makeup, also has a hard ideological edge, which critics say makes it unlikely to pursue policy friendlier to Britain’s minority population, or for refugees arriving on the country’s shores.Indeed, some argue that the diversity among cabinet ministers gives Ms. Truss the cover to pursue even more radical approaches, such as a plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda — a policy now the responsibility of Suella Braverman, the new home secretary, whose father came to Britain from Kenya in 1968.Suella Braverman, the new home secretary, leaving the first cabinet meeting.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via Shutterstock“There’s a difference that makes no difference, and a change that leads to no change,” said Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University, citing as one example the Conservatives’ immigration policy and the Rwanda plan.“The fact is that you should judge it on the policy,” he said, “and the government’s track record is horrendous.”Ms. Braverman’s legal background — she is a barrister — is relevant to her new position because the government is fighting a battle in court with opponents who have stalled the Rwanda flights. She has already established herself as a hard-liner and has called for Britain to limit the influence of the European convention on human rights, which protects basic human rights and which was written into domestic British law in 1998.The chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, shares Ms. Truss’s faith in free markets, desire to cut taxes and approach to deregulation. His parents, an economist and a lawyer, came to Britain from Ghana as students in the 1960s. Cerebral and self-confident, Mr. Kwarteng attended Eton College and then won a place at Cambridge University, where he excelled academically.The new foreign secretary is James Cleverly, whose mother came to the Britain from Sierra Leone, and who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel as an Army reservist. He is perhaps the least ideological of the three, though like the other two, he was a strong proponent of Brexit.The new foreign secretary, James Cleverly, on Wednesday. Ms. Truss held the position before she became the prime minister.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockCritics point out that, unlike the overwhelming majority of Britons, Mr. Kwarteng, Ms. Braverman and Mr. Cleverly were all educated at private schools (albeit sometimes with financial aid, as in Mr. Kwarteng’s case) — proof that social class, rather than race or gender, is perhaps the more telling dividing line in British politics.For all that, Ms. Truss’s appointments put Britain indisputably ahead of many other European countries in the diversity of its political elite. On Wednesday, Ms. Truss used her first appearance in Parliament to point out that she is the third female Conservative prime minister, while the opposition Labour Party has never elected a woman as leader.“It is quite extraordinary, is it not” Ms. Truss said, “that there does not seem to be the ability in the Labour party to find a female leader, or indeed a leader who does not come from north London?” — a reference to Keir Starmer, the party leader, and his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, both of whom represent parliamentary constituencies in same part of the capital.In fact, the diversity of the cabinet can be traced to a former prime minister, David Cameron, who, after becoming party leader in 2005, altered the selection process for potential Conservative lawmakers. That effectively forced local parties to choose parliamentary candidates from lists with a bigger proportion of female, Black and minority ethnic backgrounds.“Look what’s happened to the Conservative Party,” Mr. Cameron said in an interview with The New York Times in 2019. “It used to be people like me: white, posh, male, rural southerners. It has now got a gender balance. It’s every people from every Black and minority ethnic group in the country.”David Cameron, the former prime minister of Britain, in 2019.Mary Turner for The New York TimesMr. Cameron rejected the contention that the ethnic and racial diversity masked a lack of class diversity. Among those he named to his cabinet, he noted in the interview, was Sajid Javid, whose Pakistani immigrant father drove a bus.“The fact that the old fusty Conservative Party is managing to produce people like that says a lot,” he said.Britain’s first Black cabinet minister, Paul Boateng, was appointed in 2002, but until recently there was little change at the highest reaches of government. When in 2010 a member of the House of Lords, Sayeeda Warsi, was appointed to the cabinet she was the first British politician of South Asian heritage to take up such a position. It was another four years before an elected lawmaker of South Asian heritage, Mr. Javid, joined the cabinet.In part, the gains in government by people of color reflect social change and advances through education. On average, ethnic minority pupils have outperformed white Britons at school in recent years. In every year from 2007 to 2021, white pupils had the lowest entry rate into higher education.“Cameron’s effective intervention catalyzed and sped up some that was happening in Britain,” said Mr. Katwala of British Future. He added, “In Britain we are a generation ahead of most other western European countries.”Yet critics note that the greater ethnic and gender diversity has not changed the policies of successive Conservative governments, which have grown increasingly hard-line on immigration and often embraced tax cuts and other economic policies that tend to favor wealthy people.Ms. Truss has acknowledged that her most notable tax cut proposal — a reversal of last April’s increase in national insurance rates — would disproportionately benefit those with higher incomes, since they pay the most taxes.“To look at everything through the lens of redistribution, I believe, is wrong,” Ms. Truss said to the BBC last Sunday, in what some noted was a full-throated defense of “trickle-down” economics. “What I’m about is about growing the economy and growing the economy benefits everybody.”Ms. Truss facing questions on Wednesday in a photograph released by Parliament.Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament/EPA, via ShutterstockProfessor Andrews, from Birmingham City University, said the Conservatives were practicing a particularly cynical form of identity politics by promoting the diversity among its senior leaders, while also advancing retrograde policies.Mr. Katwala argued that diversity at the top of politics doesn’t do anything automatically, but can shift attitudes by providing role models and “makes a difference in what your expectations are at a societal level.” The example he cited was that of Britain’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who came to power in 1979.“I don’t think she had a policy agenda that was good for women or any ambition to promote women,” Mr. Katwala said. “Yet when Liz Truss was at school she saw that there was a woman in Downing Street.” More

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      ¿Quién es Liz Truss, primera ministra del Reino Unido?

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      La destreza ideológica de la nueva líder británica, que algunos críticos califican de oportunismo, la ha ayudado a avanzar peldaños en la política. Ahora necesitará toda su habilidad para tener éxito.LONDRES — Cuando era una apasionada estudiante de 19 años en Oxford en 1994, Elizabeth Truss pidió un referéndum para abolir la monarquía británica, diciendo a una audiencia de compañeros demócratas liberales: “No creemos que la gente deba nacer para gobernar”.El martes, tres décadas después, Truss, quien ahora tiene 47 años y es conocida como Liz, viajó a un castillo escocés para ser ungida por la reina Isabel II como la nueva primera ministra del Reino Unido, con lo que completa así una odisea política que la ha llevado de ser una republicana bulliciosa a convertirse en la líder del Partido Conservador, revestida de tradición.Hace tiempo que Truss se decantó por la monarquía por considerarla buena para la democracia británica, y también hace tiempo que abandonó el ala liberal-demócrata por el ala conservadora. Más recientemente, cambió de bando en lo que respecta al brexit: antes del referéndum de 2016 se oponía al esfuerzo para que el Reino Unido abandonara la Unión Europea, y luego revirtió el rumbo y se convirtió en una de sus más fervientes evangelizadoras.Su destreza ideológica —los críticos lo llamarían oportunismo— ha contribuido a impulsar a Truss a la cúspide de la política británica. La preparación de Truss para los rigores del trabajo es otra cuestión, teniendo en cuenta las graves tendencias económicas que envuelven al país, y un partido tory que parece dividido entre el deseo de un nuevo comienzo y el arrepentimiento por haber echado a su extravagante predecesor, Boris Johnson.Simpatizantes animando a Truss en un acto de campaña en Manchester, Inglaterra, en agosto. Su mensaje se centró en bajar los impuestos y reducir el gobierno.Molly Darlington/ReutersTruss, según ella misma admite, no tiene el carisma de Johnson. Es torpe socialmente, mientras que él es de trato fácil, es vacilante en su modo de hablar, mientras que él es fluido. Pero Truss avanzó las filas del partido con lo que sus colegas describen como resistencia, empuje y un apetito por la política disruptiva. Cuando Johnson tuvo problemas, se posicionó con destreza: no rompió nunca públicamente con él y se mantuvo en el centro de la atención como una secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores de línea dura.“Tiene mucha confianza en sus instintos”, dijo Marc Stears, un politólogo que fue tutor de Truss cuando estaba en Oxford. “Está dispuesta a correr riesgos y a decir cosas que otros no están dispuestos a decir. A veces, eso le funciona; otras veces, la perjudica”.Acartonada en público, Truss es divertida en privado, dicen sus amigos, con un trato directo e informal, una debilidad por el karaoke y un amor sin reparos por la estrella del pop Taylor Swift. Una vez compartió una selfi con Swift en una entrega de premios, añadiendo la leyenda “Look what you made me do” (Mira lo que me hiciste hacer), el título de una de las exitosas canciones de Swift.Truss necesitará todo su instinto y agilidad para desempeñar el trabajo que hereda de Johnson. Expulsado del cargo por los legisladores de su partido tras una serie de escándalos, ha dejado tras de sí una pila de problemas de enormes proporciones, no muy diferentes de los que tuvo que afrontar Margaret Thatcher cuando se convirtió en la primera mujer en asumir el gobierno del Reino Unido en 1979, durante un periodo anterior de dificultades económicas.Truss se ha inspirado en Thatcher, posando sobre un tanque como lo hizo su heroína en Alemania Occidental y vistiendo blusas de seda con lazos, un elemento básico del vestuario de Thatcher. Pero sus ideas políticas son más parecidas a las de otro héroe de la derecha, Ronald Reagan: las promesas de bajar los impuestos y reducir el gobierno, junto con una celebración del Reino Unido posbrexit como una “nación de aspiración”.Ese mensaje atrajo a los cerca de 160.000 miembros del Partido Conservador, en su mayoría blancos y de edad avanzada, que la eligieron por encima de las duras verdades ofrecidas por su oponente, Rishi Sunak, exministro de Economía. Ahora, tendrá que volver a pivotar para liderar un país diverso y dividido que se enfrenta a sus peores noticias económicas en una generación.Truss se ha inspirado en Margaret Thatcher, pero sus ideas políticas se parecen más a la de otro héroe de la derecha, Ronald Reagan.Helmuth Lohmann/Associated Press“Una de las cosas que ha beneficiado a Liz Truss es que es tribal”, dijo Jill Rutter, investigadora principal de U.K. in a Changing Europe, un instituto de investigación de Londres. “Está muy dispuesta a abrazar todo lo relacionado con un equipo. El problema de ser una jugadora de equipo es que ahora tiene que definir la agenda”.Nacida en 1975, cuatro años antes de que Thatcher llegara al poder, Truss creció en una familia declaradamente de izquierda, con un padre matemático y una madre profesora y enfermera. Habla a menudo de su paso por una secundaria pública en la dura ciudad de Leeds, que, según ella, “defraudaba” a sus alumnos con bajas expectativas, escasas oportunidades y un ayuntamiento atrapado en las garras de lo políticamente correcto.Algunos de sus contemporáneos cuestionan su relato de la época escolar. Señalan que creció en un barrio acomodado de la ciudad que durante mucho tiempo votó por los conservadores. También la acusan de demeritar a sus profesores, que la ayudaron a ser admitida —después de vivir un año en Canadá con su familia— en el Merton College, uno de los colegios más rigurosos académicamente de Oxford.En Oxford, Truss estudió filosofía, política y economía, un programa de estudios de élite del que ha salido un club de políticos prominentes, incluido un ex primer ministro, David Cameron. Algunos han criticado el programa por dar prioridad a la facilidad de palabra y al estudio rápido. Pero Stears dijo que Truss no se ajustaba al cliché de una estudiante de ese programa.“Su habilidad particular no consistía en dominar un encargo ni en ser simplista o fácil, sino en dar con algo inesperado”, dijo. “Cada obra que realizaba era provocativa. Se deleita en la controversia y en provocar a la gente”.Rishi Sunak, rival de Truss por el liderazgo del Partido Conservador, perdió por unos 21.000 votos.Susannah Ireland/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLa política la atrajo pronto, y Truss se convirtió en presidenta de los Demócratas Liberales de la Universidad de Oxford, donde hizo campaña para legalizar la marihuana. Sin embargo, poco después de graduarse en 1996, se pasó a los conservadores, un partido que entonces deambulaba hacia el páramo de la política. Trabajó en el sector privado, para el gigante energético Shell y para Cable & Wireless, y obtuvo el título de contadora pública.En el año 2000, Truss se casó con Hugh O’Leary, un contador al que conoció en una conferencia del partido y con el que ahora tiene dos hijas. Su vida personal amenazó brevemente su carrera en 2005, después de que mantuviera una relación extramatrimonial con un miembro del Parlamento, Mark Field, quien también estaba casado, al que el partido había nombrado su mentor político. El matrimonio de Field se rompió; el de Truss sobrevivió.Elegida al Parlamento en 2010 como diputada por el suroeste de Norfolk, Truss llegó a ocupar seis puestos ministeriales durante los gobiernos de tres primeros ministros conservadores. Su historial político, según la gente que la conoce, era variado, y le costaba hablar en público.Mientras ocupaba el cargo de secretaria de Medio Ambiente en 2014, fue objeto de muchas burlas por un discurso en el que señaló con ligereza que el Reino Unido importaba dos tercios de su queso, para luego fruncir el ceño y añadir portentosamente: “¡Eso es una vergüenza!”.Fue más persuasiva en la campaña contra la salida del Reino Unido de la Unión Europea. En un discurso ante un grupo de la industria de la alimentación y las bebidas, Truss dijo: “Creo que los británicos son gente sensata. Entienden fundamentalmente que, desde el punto de vista económico, al Reino Unido le conviene permanecer en una Unión Europea reformada”.Truss haciendo campaña para el Partido Conservador en West Walton, Norfolk, en 2010.Chris Radburn/Press Association vía Associated PressTras la votación de 2016, Truss dio marcha atrás para convertirse en una entusiasta del brexit. “Me equivoqué, y estoy dispuesta a admitir que me equivoqué”, dijo recientemente, al sostener que las advertencias sobre los efectos calamitosos del brexit habían sido exageradas y que, de hecho, había desencadenado beneficios.Aunque pocos culpan a Truss por su cambio juvenil de liberal-demócrata a conservadora, muchos critican su apoyo retroactivo al brexit. “Esa no es una respuesta seria”, dijo Rutter, de U.K. in a Changing Europe. “Se acumulan las pruebas de que si dificultas el comercio con tu mayor socio comercial, eso perjudica a tu economía”.Ese cambio de postura no ha sido un obstáculo en su carrera. Truss pasó por puestos en el Departamento de Justicia y el Tesoro antes de que Johnson la nombrara ministra de Comercio Internacional en 2019. Recorrió el mundo, firmó acuerdos comerciales posbrexit con Japón, Australia y otros países. Los analistas señalaron que eran en gran medida versiones cortadas y pegadas de los acuerdos de la Unión Europea, pero ella supo beneficiarse de la publicidad.“Muy pronto me pareció que era una probable candidata a primera ministra”, dijo Robert E. Lighthizer, quien, como representante comercial del entonces presidente estadounidense Donald Trump, inició conversaciones sobre un acuerdo transatlántico con Truss.Por el camino, Truss ha mostrado intéres por las fuerzas disruptivas, como el servicio de Uber. Una vez publicó en Twitter que la generación más joven de británicos era “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters”.La campaña por el liderazgo del partido incluyó una visita a una planta de producción de Jaguar el mes pasado.Foto de consorcio de Jacob King“Ha estado muy dispuesta a definirse a sí misma como una disruptora y a establecer un vínculo entre eso y un enfoque político que beneficie al país”, dijo Bronwen Maddox, directora de Chatham House, la institución de investigación londinense. “Eso tiene algo de refrescante, además de ser obviamente un peligro”.Al igual que Thatcher, también se presenta como una férrea defensora de la democracia occidental. Elevada a secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores en 2021, Truss superó incluso a Johnson en su línea dura contra Rusia. “Putin debe perder en Ucrania”, declaró el pasado marzo durante una visita a Lituania. En vísperas de la guerra, mantuvo una famosa y gélida reunión con el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores ruso, Serguéi Lavrov.Según sus colegas, Truss estará encantada de enfrentarse a Putin. Pero algunos predicen que su mayor némesis será Johnson. Ambicioso y todavía popular entre las bases conservadoras, es probable que siga siendo un personaje noticioso, que podría burlarse de Truss desde los bancos del Parlamento o en una columna de prensa, según Gavin Barwell, quien fue jefe de gabinete de la predecesora de Johnson, Theresa May.“Va a ser como el fantasma de Banquo”, dijo Barwell, en referencia a la aparición que atormentaba al Macbeth de Shakespeare. “En el momento en que se vea en dificultades políticas, habrá un movimiento para traer de vuelta a Boris”.Mark Landler es el jefe de la oficina de Londres. En 27 años en el Times, ha sido jefe de la oficina en Hong Kong y Fráncfort, corresponsal en la Casa Blanca, corresponsal diplomático, corresponsal económico europeo y reportero de negocios en Nueva York. @MarkLandler More

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      Blackpool Shows Challenges for New U.K. Leader Liz Truss

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      Blackpool contains one of the most deprived areas to turn to the Conservatives in Britain’s last general election. But with costs rising, there are already signs of cracks in that support.BLACKPOOL, England — The famed annual light show still illuminates the sky each night in the seaside town of Blackpool in England’s northwest, having survived the nationwide effort to conserve energy. But beneath the glitter, the evidence of decades of decline is everywhere.The signs on the small hotels that line long stretches of the coastline have faded, and “vacancy” notices flash in their front windows. Shuttered storefronts‌ dot‌ the roads in the center of town. The doorways of defunct nightclubs are crowded with those sleeping rough.Liz Truss, who took over as Britain’s prime minister on Tuesday, will have no shortage of issues to address in a country facing grave economic crises. On Thursday, Ms. Truss is set to announce a plan to limit the sharp rise in energy costs.But the most daunting challenges will come in towns like Blackpool, already one of the most deprived in England, according to government statistics.Blackpool South, where the popular Pleasure Beach amusement park stands, long supported the Labour Party but switched to backing the Conservative Party in the 2019 election that brought Boris Johnson to power. It was one of the poorest areas of England to switch parties.But with costs for nearly everything rising, and worries that energy bills could skyrocket to thousands of pounds a year for the average household, there are already indications of cracks in the Conservative coalition.Liz Truss after winning the Conservative Party leadership in London on Monday. She has promised relief for struggling towns like Blackpool.Frank Augstein/Associated Press“I do not think that having Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak would have made any difference to the economy of Blackpool,” said Ava Makepeace, a resident, referring to Ms. Truss’s opponent in the leadership race that ended this week in her victory.Ms. Makepeace, 51, was critical of Conservative policies, and said that Brexit, which Blackpool overwhelmingly favored in a 2016 referendum, had also had a negative effect on the town.“No one can get decent staff anymore,” she said of the restaurants and hotels that had relied on overseas workers. “And poverty in certain areas of central Blackpool are the worst they have ever been.”The Fall of Boris Johnson, ExplainedCard 1 of 5The Fall of Boris Johnson, ExplainedTurmoil at Downing Street. More