What Liz Truss Didn't Say

Records, it is said, are made to be broken.

Liz Truss resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after a mere 44 days in office, thereby setting a new record for the shortest tenure in that office. Announcing her departure, Truss spoke, according to The New York Times, 

almost wistfully about how the collapse of her economic plans meant she would never achieve her goal of creating a “low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit.”(1)

More important than what Truss said was what she didn’t say—what she didn’t have as goals for the United Kingdom and its people.

Britain, Derek Thompson, notes

is pretty poor for a rich place. U.K. living standards and wages have fallen significantly behind those of Western Europe. By some measures, in fact, real wages in the U.K. are lower than they were 15 years ago, and will likely be even lower next year.(2)

Britons are suffering not only from meager wages but from a breakdown in those services that make for a decent life. There are crises in the delivery of vocational, education, medical, dental, and ambulance services throughout the UK. Here are just two headlines from today’s Guardian:

‘I’m not very well and I need heat’: at the warm bank in Wolverhampton

Seven in 10 NHS trusts in England failing to hit cancer referrals target(3)

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But instead of mentioning concern for those concrete essences known as human beings, Liz Truss could only be wistful about an abstraction: the economy. 

In the countdown to her departure as Prime Minister, Truss was outlasted by a head of lettuce.(4) Depending on what definition you wish to employ (“a time of inexperience or indiscretion” or “a heyday, when a person is/was at the peak of their abilities, while not necessarily a youth”) Truss’ tenure as PM was—or was not—her salad days. 

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Rishi Sunak has become Truss’ successor at 10 Downing Street. And what did he proclaim when he threw his hat into the ring to succeed her?

I want to fix our economy.(5)

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(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/world/europe/uk-brexit-conservatives.html 

(2) https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/uk-economy-disaster-degrowth-brexit/671847/

(3) https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news

(4) https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/why-liz-truss-resigned-britain-political-instability/671805/

(5) https://fortune.com/2022/10/23/rishi-sunak-uk-prime-minister-bid-fix-economy/