This week's collection of whimsical and curious stories was originally supposed to explain how you can vote on overweight grizzly bears (or more precisely, which grizzly bear in Katmai National Park, Alaska, has visibly managed to pack on the most pounds over these past summer months). However, given the political turmoil unfolding in the UK, we will leave the Grizzlies to another day and instead talk about Prime Ministers (and lettuce).
A (not so) mini budget - not content with just having a delayed start (due to the passing of Queen Elizabeth II), the newly formed government under Liz Truss also promptly blew up on the launch pad. The spark was provided by a package of unfunded tax cuts and energy subsidies that Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced on September 23 in his so-called "mini budget". The financial markets had apparently not taken note of the "mini" prefix and instead proceeded to throw themselves off a cliff. This triggered the Bank of England to intervene and buy up long-term government debt in an effort to provide liquidity - which in turn led the Economist newspaper to quip that the new Prime Minister had the "shelf-life of a lettuce" having lost control only seven days into her term. The tabloid Daily Star followed suit by setting up a live cam pitting lettuce against Prime Minister:
Ministers overboard - In the best tradition of hot air balloonists, Truss proceeded to shed ballast to re-float her government. First, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was unceremoniously dropped followed by Interior Minister Suella Braverman*. As we now know, this was too little and too late and the Tory party was left with choosing a new PM (to prevent poll numbers from dropping any further).
This task would have been considerably easier if the BBC headline that followed on the day of Truss' resignation wasn't just poorly worded. In it, the author suggested that the second shortest serving PM, George Canning, served "for 119 days after dying in 1827".
BBC headline from October 20th, 2022
Rather than handing the prime ministership to the young former Chancellor Rishi Sunak, the conservative Tory party could have handed the reins of power to the experienced (and decomposing) hands of William Pitt the Younger to help calm some nerves. If diplomatic ties with the European continent were not to improve, they might also have elected Winston Churchill or the Duke of Wellington instead.
However, rather than resurrecting the ghosts of old glory, it briefly looked as though the Tories might opt for the Right Honourable Rumpelstilzchen instead. Within two days of Liz Truss's resignation, Boris Johnson was jetting back to London to launch his leadership bid (probably hoping that the circumstances of his previous resignation had grown sufficiently hazy in the minds of his party members).
Away from it all - one of the few people emerging as a winner from all this seems to be former PM Theresa May. Ousted (in no small part) by Boris Johnson in 2019, she must have been watching the unfolding events with some measure of satisfaction from her newly opened chocolate store:
The Telegraph - Link
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*Suella Braverman's resignation was officially explained by her breaching "Ministerial Code" for leaking confidential documents. She was later reinstated by Rishi Sunak.
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