British Prime Minister Liz Truss attends a news conference in London on Oct. 14.POOL/Reuters
How bad have things become for British Prime Minister Liz Truss? There are now betting odds that her time as Prime Minister won’t last longer than a wilting head of lettuce.
Ms. Truss has been fighting for her political life since Friday when she fired Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng and backtracked on a pledge to scrap an increase in the corporate tax rate from 19 per cent to 25 per cent, her second policy U-turn this month.
She’s only been in charge for five weeks, having won the race to succeed Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister on Sept. 6. But a botched mini-budget, a barrage of criticism and sinking poll numbers have led Conservative members of Parliament to consider pushing her out. “I think the game’s up and it’s now a question as to how the succession is managed,” long-time Tory MP Crispin Blunt said on Sunday.
The political drama has also prompted some uniquely British takes on Ms. Truss’s sagging fortunes.
Last week, an editorial in The Economist magazine ripped Ms. Truss’s brief time in office and dubbed her “the iceberg lady” and said her tenure as Prime Minister had “the shelf-life of a lettuce.”
The Daily Star tabloid picked up on the theme, and on Friday it set up a live web feed of a head of iceberg lettuce next to a photograph of Ms. Truss.
“Can Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?” the newspaper asked. For good measure, the paper put a blonde wig on the lettuce along with a pair of eyes, a smile and a waving hand. At one point on Sunday around 300 people tuned into the live broadcast.
Ms. Truss “is now odds-on to survive less time than the crisp iceberg we bought for 60 pence from Tesco,” the Star said Sunday. It noted that the betting company Ladbrokes had slashed the odds to 10 to 11 that the lettuce would last longer. “After three days, the lettuce is a little brown around the outer leaves. Meanwhile, Truss is starting to look like she’s ready for the bin right now,” the Star said.
There have been plenty of other colourful commentaries on the Prime Minister’s fortunes.
Comedian Michael Spicer made a short video that mocked the breathless media coverage of Ms. Truss’s plight, which has been dominated by reporters quoting unnamed Tory MPs criticizing the Prime Minister. “I’ve been talking to a number of high-ranking Conservative Party MPs tonight and they are telling me they want her out and they want her out now,” Mr. Spicer says grimly in the video. “One MP told me, ‘I would rather go into the general election led by a serial killer dressed as the coronavirus than Liz Truss.’ ”
Another video posted online featured the opening of The Muppet Show with photographs of Ms. Truss and her cabinet dancing in the House of Commons, along with clips from the Prime Minister’s news conference on Friday when she announced that Mr. Kwarteng had been replaced.
Actor Miriam Margolyes took things even further on a BBC Radio show on Saturday with a profane takedown of Jeremy Hunt, who has replaced Mr. Kwarteng.
During a live appearance on the BBC’s Today program, Ms. Margolyes paid tribute to actor Robbie Coltrane, who died on Friday. At the end of her comments, she mentioned she had spotted Mr. Hunt in the studio just after he’d been interviewed on the show. “When I saw him there, I just said: ‘You’ve got a hell of a job, the best of luck.’ ” But then she swore when she noted what she really wanted to say to him. One of the show’s hosts, Justin Webb, jumped in and said: “Oh, no, no, no, you mustn’t say that. No, you can’t say that. We’ll have to have you out of the studio now.” He later apologized to listeners for the swear word.
Ms. Truss hasn’t helped her cause. She has been the butt of jokes after her stilted delivery during Friday’s news conference, which lasted less than 10 minutes and included lengthy pauses as she struggled to answer four questions. And a gaffe she made on Twitter during last summer’s leadership race has also come back to haunt her.
During the campaign, Ms. Truss thanked her supporters and added in a tweet: “I’m ready to hit the ground from day one.” The tweet was quickly deleted, and the word “running” was added in, but the original version has been resurfacing lately.
“When Truss tweeted she was ‘ready to hit the ground from day one’ she was more prescient than we knew,” said Andrew Tickell, a newspaper columnist.