Britain's Prime Minister Liz Truss reacts as she delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London on October 20, 2022 to announce her resignation. Photo: DANIEL LEAL / AFP
By Rebecca Armitage for the ABC
On September 6, 2022, two British women named Elizabeth walked into a room for a quick, friendly chat that would change history.
One was Queen Elizabeth II, the kingdom's longest serving monarch who spent seven decades of her life on the throne.
The other was Liz Truss, a newly minted British prime minister, whose premiership would last just six weeks before collapsing in spectacular chaos.
As they smiled and shook hands for the camera, neither woman could possibly realise the fleeting role they'd play in each other's stories.
For the Queen - looking happy but frail in her Balmoral tartan skirt - this was the last time she would ever be seen by her subjects.
She died two days later.
For Truss, this was the moment she became a curious footnote in history.
Despite her brief and messy tenure, she will always be the prime minister who led the United Kingdom out of its second Elizabeth era.
The Queen died two days after appointing Liz Truss as prime minister. Photo: AFP / Pool
She was the Queen's 15th and final prime minister, and she was King Charles's first.
She was mistaken for an unknown "minor royal" by Channel Nine commentators on her way into Westminster Abbey.
PM Liz Truss mistaken for "minor royal" as TV commentators struggle to identify her at Queen's funeralpic.twitter.com/UjJKBIa2BI
— The Mirror (@DailyMirror) September 19, 2022
But while her six living predecessors sat in the pews, Truss was the only one who spoke at the Queen's funeral.
After just 44 days featuring dramatic U-turns on her own policy ideas, a stock market driven precipitously close to the brink, and the shock sacking of her closest political ally, the infinitesimal Liz Truss era has also drawn to a close.
A 'glass cliff' or a 'death cult'?
In the business world, they call it "the glass cliff".
The cruel and elusive cousin of the metaphorical "glass ceiling", which traps women from reaching their full potential, the glass cliff allows them to get there - and then promptly hurtles them into the abyss below.
The term was coined by British researchers Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam, who set out to investigate a 2003 claim by the UK Times that female chief executives "wreaked havoc on companies' performance and share prices".
They found that the women weren't really the problem at all.
Instead, it became clear that ailing companies are more likely to appoint a woman or person of colour to lead them out of crisis.
Subsequent studies have found a similar phenomenon plays out in sporting groups and politics.
Whether the organisation is trying to signal that they're embracing change, or simply can't find a member of the old boys' network willing to take the risk, a woman takes the helm.
A woman or person of colour, who may sense this is their only chance to lead, takes the gamble.
Experts remain divided over whether the two most recent Tory female leaders, Theresa May and Liz Truss, slid off the glass cliff as they tried to lead Britain through post-Brexit pandemonium.
When asked about the phenomenon by Julia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for their book Women and Leadership, May said she didn't think there was a "huge gender element" to her selection as leader.
Theresa May's time at the helm also ended abruptly. Photo: AFP
"I think there was an element of wanting something different from the leader compared to what members of parliament had had previously. That was partly about background as well as other things," she told them.
But others say her case highlights the problem of women being appointed to the top job at a time of crisis.
"[May's] rise and fall was a classic example of the glass cliff syndrome," said Catherine Mayer, the founder of the UK Women's Equality Party, when Truss won the Tory leadership ballot.
"In one way Liz Truss is a classic example of the glass cliff syndrome: her premiership is bound to be disastrous and end in failure.
"But she is not a true Conservative in the sense of representing the status quo. She is part of a Tory party in total thrall to regressive populism."
Liz Truss has provided an amazing example of the glass cliff syndrome (most victims don’t take a running jump over the edge). Jeremy Hunt is modelling the “saviour effect”, with even opposition MPs speaking of relief as he rides in to calm markets with old-style (nasty) austerity https://t.co/iHWQlZ8Ejd pic.twitter.com/QB0JNQUoME
— Catherine Mayer (@catherine_mayer) October 17, 2022
Some say the Tory party, which has ruled Britain for 12 tumultuous years, has become hell-bent on self-destruction.
"The Conservatives appear increasingly to resemble a political death cult, having burnt through four prime ministers in six years and four chancellors in the space of a barely believable four months," Caroline Wheeler, the political editor of the UK Sunday Times wrote in a scathing column earlier this month.
Whether it was sexism that brought her down, her inexperience and overconfidence, her party's unravelling, or a combination of all three, Liz Truss plunged over the glass cliff with breathtaking speed.
Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng and Britain's Prime Minister Liz Truss attend the opening day of the annual Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, central England. Photo: OLI SCARFF / AFP
Two friends go to Downing Street
After joining a crowded field of 11 candidates to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, Liz Truss pledged that she would deliver tax cuts "from day one" if she won.
It soon became a sticking point between Truss and her main rival Rishi Sunak, with the pair going head to head over the policy proposal in a leader's debate in July.
Sunak argued it was "not moral" to pass unfunded tax cuts and borrow to pay for them, adding it was a "short-term sugar rush" that would simply be passed onto future generations to pay for.
But Truss dismissed the criticism as a "project of fear".
Winning with the smallest share of Tory membership votes than any of her predecessors, Truss walked into Number 10 with a shaky mandate.
But she did have one invaluable asset: Her best friend by her side.
Her newly appointed chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has often been described as Truss's "ideological soulmate".
They both entered parliament in 2010 and even bought houses on the same leafy street in the upscale London borough of Greenwich.
But two weeks after they moved to Downing Street together, they unveiled a "mini budget" that set off a chain of events that would destroy their political careers and their friendship.
They planned to cut the lowest income tax rate from 20 to 19 per cent and reduce the highest rate from 45 to 40 per cent, with the total sweeping tax proposal set to cost £45 billion (NZ$89 billion).
Despite her short term, Truss served under two monarchs. Photo: Yui Mok / POOL / AFP
They also capped energy bills, amid fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin would limit gas supplies to Europe as temperatures plummeted, announcing a two-year scheme to fix prices that would cost £60b (NZ$118 billion) in the first six months.
The plan, aimed at heading off concerns of a recession, appeared to have the opposite effect.
UK government bond yields soared as investors soured on the UK's economic prospects. The pound hit a record low at $1.0350 against the US dollar on 26 September and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sharply rebuked the UK's tax plan.
With the world's sixth biggest economy on the brink, the Bank of England launched a series of extraordinary interventions, buying $US73 billion worth of UK government bonds to "prevent a self-reinforcing spiral" and "restore orderly market conditions".
Truss was unrepentant, saying she had taken "controversial, difficult decisions" because they were necessary.
"I'm prepared to do that as prime minister because what's important to me is that we get our economy moving," she said.
With the pound on the brink and rumours of a Tory mutiny afoot, Truss and Kwarteng reportedly had a "row" at Number 10 as they attempted to "thrash out" an agreement over how to respond to their unfolding crisis.
"I have never seen anything like this," said David "Danny" Blanchflower, who sat on the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, on Sky News.
"I've been an economist for 50 years. I went through the great recession, and I have never seen such a raging incompetence ever."
Professor @D_Blanchflower:
— Adam Schwarz (@AdamJSchwarz) September 27, 2022
"If you're the Chancellor, what you've done is crashed the bond markets, the foreign exchange markets, the stock market has dropped, the housing market is in trouble and you create a giant recession... I've never seen such raging incompetence, ever." pic.twitter.com/K7lowZxz2u
Kwarteng went to Washington DC in October for a meeting with the IMF, but dashed home early when he heard Truss was considering a U-turn on their mini-budget.
By the time he stepped off the plane at Heathrow, Truss had already called Jeremy Hunt and asked him to be her new chancellor.
He was in the car on the way to Downing Street when he read a news alert on his phone that his best friend was about to sack him.
No one but Truss and Kwarteng knows exactly what happened in that room.
But despite their decade-long friendship and the shared economic philosophy on which they had campaigned together, Truss sacrificed her sole ally in a desperate bid to buy herself some more time.
— Kwasi Kwarteng (@KwasiKwarteng) October 14, 2022
Truss faced a press conference alone to explain her decision, during which she apologised for her mini-budget that she said went "too far and too fast" for the markets.
Her abrupt U-turn didn't save her.
Her performance at the press conference was cattily dismissed by her colleagues as "so wooden" that "getting rid of her wouldn't be regicide, it would be deforestation".
Journalists noted that she only showed a flicker of emotion when paying tribute to her now jettisoned friend.
"I was incredibly sorry to lose him, he is a great friend” says PM Liz Truss after sacking Kwasi Kwarteng
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) October 14, 2022
She says new chancellor Jeremy Hunt “shares my convictions" and will deliver medium term fiscal plan at end of this month https://t.co/VDNo6gW4dU pic.twitter.com/nGhRbrSH5V
"In human terms, it is difficult to avoid feeling sympathy for a person going through this collapse," Scottish commentator Iain Martin wrote in the UK Times.
"Her assumption that a spirit of radical adventurism, a can-do libertarianism, would carry her through and unleash optimism and growth has turned out to be wrong."
'One horror story after another'
The humiliations for Truss kept piling up.
The British tabloid, the Daily Star, set up a live feed of an unrefrigerated iceberg lettuce next to a photo of Truss.
"Which wet lettuce will last longer?" it asked.
Day one: Which wet lettuce will last longer? https://t.co/vReEEeL6jk
— Daily Star (@dailystar) October 14, 2022
In an exceptionally rare rebuke from the leader of an allied nation, US President Joe Biden called Truss's economic plan a "mistake".
And King Charles seemed surprised she had survived long enough to make it to their second meeting.
"So you've come back again? Dear, oh dear," he said as she curtseyed.
NEW VIDEO: King Charles holds the first of his weekly audiences with Prime Minister Liz Truss.
— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) October 12, 2022
It happened today at Buckingham Palace pic.twitter.com/VibppWrT8C
The man she brought in to help save her political career, Jeremy Hunt, began acting curiously like he was already the de facto PM.
Once installed as chancellor, he announced he was scrapping "almost all" of Truss and Kwarteng's tax cuts.
Hunt, who dropped out of the Tory leadership after failing to get enough votes to progress from the first round, was now "in charge" - not the woman who had actually won.
While Truss insisted she could and would hold on to the next general election, her power was clearly draining away as Tory rebels began openly sledging her.
"I would be very, very surprised if there are people dying in a ditch to keep Liz Truss as our Prime Minister," MP Crispin Blunt said.
Conservative MP Robert Halfon said the Truss era had unleashed "one horror story after another".
"The government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free-market experiments," he said on Sky News.
On 18 October, Truss sent her former rival for the top job, Penny Mordaunt, to fill in for her at Prime Minister's Questions.
Shouts of "where is she?" and "the lady's not for turning up!" were heard in the House of Commons as Mordaunt battled on.
"The prime minister is not under a desk"
— Bloomberg UK (@BloombergUK) October 17, 2022
Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt says Liz Truss is absent from the Commons "for a very good reason," after Labour's Stella Creasy accuses the PM of "cowering" https://t.co/wDkuPl9x3K pic.twitter.com/YqY0ndrA74
"All we know right now is, unless she tells us otherwise, the prime minister is cowering under her desk and asking for it all to go away," Labour MP Stella Creasy shot across the chamber.
"Well, the prime minister is not under a desk, as the honourable lady says..." Mordaunt replied before she was drowned out by hoots of laughter.
Every time Truss thought she had bought herself a few more days in office, another catastrophe would unfold.
On a single October day, her Home Secretary quit, her party descended into farce over a fracking vote, and she reportedly gave chase through the halls of Westminster when a colleague threatened to quit.
First, Suella Braverman stepped down after she was caught leaking sensitive documents to her supporters.
"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 polities," Braverman wrote in a resignation letter riddled with shade and veiled barbs.
Suella Braverman did not go quietly. Photo: AFP / Adrian Dennis
Later in the day, some Conservatives were reportedly "physically manhandled" by colleagues after their chief whip threatened to expel anyone who didn't vote with the government on fracking - a divisive issue in the party.
After a howl of outrage, the chief whip Wendy Morton then threatened to quit, leading Truss to chase her through the halls of parliament.
Her security detail briefly lost the prime minister as they ran after both women.
"As a Tory MP of 17 years who has never been a minister, who's got on with it - loyally most of the time - I think it's a shambles and a disgrace. Utterly appalling," backbencher Charles Walker declared to the BBC.
Conservative MP Charles Walker seems broken by tonight's events - tells @BBCNews he is livid with colleagues pic.twitter.com/H5ns9iWV3T
— Dan Johnson (@DanJohnsonNews) October 19, 2022
"I shouldn't say this, but I hope all those people who put Liz Truss in Number 10, I hope it was worth it ... I've had enough of talentless people."
The British people have watched all of this unfold.
A recent devastating poll shows Labour now leads the Conservatives by 36 points.
It's an insurmountable gap that would end more than a decade of Tory rule and see many Conservative MPs lose their seats.
An election must be held before January 2025 at the latest, but speculation is mounting a snap election may be called before Christmas.
Voters are the ones who have endured a devastating pandemic, Putin's cold and costly winter, and now a looming recession.
After their government descended into chaos, in-fighting and betrayal, they want a say in what happens next.
- ABC
