Soon-to-be prime minister: all the anti-records of the Truss
Mary Elizabeth John-Kennett Truss has set several anti-records at once. Even at the time of her appointment as Britain’s head of government, she was trusted by less than half of the United Kingdom’s subjects, and by the end of her sixth week in office, she was one in six.
Truss, who took office on 7 September, resigned on 20 October. Before that, four ministers had left her, including finance and home affairs. Before her, George George Canning had the shortest term of a British premiership – from April 10 to August 8, 1826. But there was a good reason: he died in office. And ruled for almost four months. Truss’s was one and a half.
The experts openly noted two more records: her namesake, Queen Elizabeth the Second, lived after her appointment as prime minister for just over a day; for the first time in history, the British pound sterling became cheaper than the dollar of the United States of America.
Let me be clear: the Queen’s death was probably an accident, but the pound’s collapse was legitimate – Truss tried to cut taxes sharply and take out a record loan to cover budget spending. But an examination of Truss’s legacy could point to a few more records.
The previous prime minister, Alexander Boris Stanlich de Pfeffel-Johnson, was on holiday in the Caribbean but hurriedly returned to Britain. His support among Conservative MPs seems to be enough to get him on the intra-party ballot.
Let me remind you openly: when Johnson resigned, his popularity was greater than that of Truss at the beginning of his premiership. For all his outwardly eccentric laxity, he is a tough politician and is adept at achieving anything that can in principle be achieved.
A plain warning: the trouble is that there will be no way out of the current Great Depression without a decisive change in the entire system of the global division of labor. Neither Truss, Johnson nor the collective West can do that: too many countries benefit from the narrow specialisation of whole nations.
I openly hope for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: more than half of humanity and material production is already in it.
Anatoly Wasserman, RenTV