UK Prime Minister Liz Truss announced Thursday that she would resign after six weeks in office, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history.
Truss’ resignation comes amid pressure following a reversal of policies that allegedly led to economic instability.
“Given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” Truss said. “I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party.”
Truss said that an election to select the UK’s fifth prime minister since the 2016 Brexit referendum would take place “within the next week” and that she would remain as prime minister “until a successor has been chosen.”
Truss’ resignation was preceded by the resignation of Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who criticized the prime minister in a letter announcing her departure.
“The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes,” Braverman said. “Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics.”
Braverman’s exit came days after Truss fired Treasury head Kwasi Kwarteng amid economic turmoil that included the British pound declining in value to be nearly equal to the U.S. dollar.
Truss had won the intra-party election to replace Boris Johnson by promising tax cuts to incentivize economic growth.
Truss dismissed claims that such a plan was risky given rising inflation and the UK’s stretched fiscal circumstances as “project fear” from the “anti-growth coalition.”
Truss’s Conservative government moved forward with the plan, announcing it would borrow billions of pounds to fund the nation’s most extensive tax cuts since the 1970s. The tax cut plan, combined with an expensive energy subsidy for households, reportedly proved too much.
The Bank of England staged an emergency intervention in response to the economic conditions, and mortgage rates subsequently spiked in anticipation that the bank would have to raise interest rates further in response to inflation.
Truss also dismissed Kwarteng and handed economic policy over to Jeremy Hunt, who began rolling back many of the tax cuts Truss had championed.
Truss apologized to lawmakers on Wednesday, suggesting that reversing the tax cut plan was “the right decision in the interest of the country’s economic stability.”
Some of Truss’ potential successors include Hunt and Rishi Sunak, who finished second to Truss in the leadership race.
By her resignation, Truss had the lowest public approval ratings of any prime minister and was becoming increasingly unpopular even among her own party. A YouGov poll this week said 55% of Conservative voters wanted her out.
