Today, Explained - Truss fall

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Liz Truss accomplished at least one thing in her 45 days as prime minister: She set a record for the shortest term in office. The Atlantic’s Tom McTague explains her disastrous tenure. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Correction, October 21: An earlier version of the episode misattributed a quote to British politician Penny Mordaunt. The error has been corrected. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I came into office at a time of great economic and international instability. Liz Truss did. Families and businesses were worried about how to pay their bills. They all were. But the UK Prime Minister then made her own contribution to the instability by jimmying with the country's economy, instituting tax cuts for the richest people with nary a plan to pay for them. Her 45 days in office were so tumultuous that people began to predict the end at the beginning.

A British tabloid, The Daily Star, purchased a head of lettuce, set up a live video of the lettuce and asked, will Liz Truss outlast this lettuce? This lettuce outlasted Liz Truss, the live feed now says. Coming up on Today Explained. I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs.

And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. Tom McTague, the Atlantic's man in London. What the hell has been happening in the United Kingdom? Well, nobody knows here. You know, we're all watching it. I'm sat here watching it with my wife and just utter sort of, we're both completely perplexed at what's happening.

We've never seen anything like it. This is the shortest running premiership in history. The last prime minister who came anywhere near this died in office, and she doesn't have that excuse. This is a terrible moment for the country. Liz Truss replaced Boris Johnson as Prime Minister after a protracted Conservative Party leadership contest over the summer, promising sweeping kind of Reaganite tax cuts to boost the British economy. I know that our beliefs resonate with the British people. Our beliefs in freedom,

in the ability to control your own life, in low taxes, in personal responsibility. She comes in with this top-thumping tax-cutting agenda. She introduces it a couple of weeks after she becomes Prime Minister. She couldn't do anything for the first 10 days because the Queen died almost immediately

after she became Prime Minister. So as soon as she comes out of that period of mourning, she introduces these tax cuts and then all hell breaks loose. Early this morning, ahead of the Chancellor's statement, the pound was already falling against the dollar, based on what the markets knew was coming. As the Chancellor delivered his statement, with surprise extra tax cuts funded by borrowing, the pound fell even more. The financial market's going to melt down.

Interest rates go through the roof. People's mortgages start spiralling out of control. Anger starts going everywhere. I'm going to just blaze on into the questions. Lots from my listeners this morning. Carrie in Birchington says, what on earth were you thinking? The country was already in a state of recession.

And another says, how can we ever trust the Conservatives with our economy again? And Lydia says, are you ashamed of what you've done? Are you? And Conservative MPs eventually just say enough and you have to go. And that's what's happened today. I was in the UK when she first announced the tax cuts, and my friends there were freaking out about their mortgages. They were glued to the BBC, and Liz was like, we're doing this. And then two-ish weeks later, she reversed herself and was like, oh, actually, this is not going to work. It was very embarrassing. Why didn't she know any better? That's what she was elected to do, right?

And also, I think it's a bit of a moment for Britain this, you know, Britain isn't the kind of country where this thing is supposed to happen, where the markets can get rid of a prime minister. You know, we're supposed to be stronger than that. You know, you can do such tax cutting agendas, because ultimately, everyone knows Britain will pay its way, Britain will pay back its money. But for whatever reason, we've got to a state where that is not necessarily the case. And the markets began panicking that these plans were so wild, they weren't up to scratch. They didn't meet the sort of necessary criteria.

They were just ridiculous. On Wednesday, the leader of the opposition painted a bleak picture. The Tories went on a borrowing spree, sending mortgage rates through the roof. They are skyrocketing by £500 a month. And for nearly two million homeowners, their fixed rate deals are coming to an end next year. They're worried sick, and everybody in this house knows it. They won't forgive. Let me ask you about Liz Truss. Who who is this woman?

Well, we've barely got to know her here, to be honest. Six weeks, six weeks. Can you believe it? You know, we're going through prime ministers like like Donald Trump went through advisers, right? That's what that's what's happening here. You can't get rid of the president in the way that we can get rid of prime ministers. If they're not up to scratch, we just get rid of them. It just doesn't usually happen this quickly. So she was the foreign secretary under Boris Johnson. And the way that she got the top job is that she didn't plunge the knife into Boris

in the way that her rivals for the Tory leadership did. She kind of held on and stayed loyal. Boris, you got Brexit done. You crushed Jeremy Corbyn. You rolled out the vaccine and you stood up to Vladimir Putin. You were admired from Kiev to Carlisle. Her background is really interesting.

She didn't start off as a conservative at all, actually. She started as a liberal, a Lib Dem, a liberal Democrat, as we is the sort of third party in Britain. And she was from the libertarian wing of the Lib Dems. She wanted to abolish the monarchy, cut taxes. She's a real sort of Reaganite libertarian. And then she moves over to the Conservative Party. And that's the agenda she's pursuing here, which is actually very, very different to the kind of more Trumpian Brexit, which is more about it appeals more to the working classes. It's less libertarian. It's more socially conservative. And that's not her at all. She comes into office after Boris Johnson and an enormous scandal and quite an embarrassing one. Was there support for her? Did people think, all right, at the very least, Liz Truss is going to calm things down? Well, people thought that getting rid of Boris Johnson would calm things down.

You know, in a way, the country seemed to have been sucked into Johnson's chaotic life, you know, where everything is slightly mad. But it's all quite petty in a way. You know, we're talking about scandals over parties in Downing Street. In a series of photos, eight people are visible without counting the photographer. Indoor gatherings were limited to two people at the time during the second national lockdown. We weren't talking about economic Armageddon, you know, or catastrophes like that.

When you look back at it now, it felt so small, but it was chaotic. And what she offered was kind of, well, what she promised in a way was Johnsonism without all of that chaos. You know, it was, I'll carry on the Johnson agenda, I'll be positive about Britain's ambitions and what we can do in life. And we'll get, you know, we'll get through this. We'll beat the doomsters and the gloomsters.

And we will prove them all wrong. But she was far more radical than Johnson. You know, Johnson actually raised taxes. She promised to cut them. Johnson wanted to rebalance the British economy away from the Southeast. She came in and she slashed the limits on bankers' bonuses, which would help the people in the Southeast of England, which is already, you know, doing so well. Although she had this promise of being Johnson without the chaos, she was actually very, very different. So Liz Truss takes office and she says, essentially, I'm going to do trickle down economics. Everybody starts talking about Ronald Reagan again. It's awesome.

I guess the question is, why? What was going on in the country more broadly that made this new prime minister say, I am going to take dramatic and very risky steps with this country's economy? Why didn't she just come in easy, look around a bit and then start making decisions? I think for a number of reasons. First of all, Britain has been growing at a lot slower rate than usual ever really ever since the 2008 financial crisis. You know, you've got to think of Britain as a much smaller country than the United States where we're much more heavily dominated by financial services. You

know, we're a kind of, you know, New York state without all the dominated by financial services. You know, we're a kind of, you know, New York state without all the rest of the country. You know, we rely on the city of London, you know, our version of Wall Street as a great engine of the British economy, which is then provides the tax revenue for the government to redistribute in social and public services. You know, that exploded in 2008 and required the government to bail out the banks, just like in the US. Yeah. We had to bail them out. And we've been living with the consequences ever since.

So you have that in the background. And I think you have to always think of that when you think of all of the things that came next, the austerity, Brexit later. You know, there was a general sense of malaise in the country, you know, a frustration with how things are going. And then you have Brexit. Now, Brexit then, I think, to some extent, makes things harder. You know, you've taken yourself out of this giant European market. So you have trade friction on top of what would have ordinarily been, you know, difficult circumstances anyway. So you've got these two things. So you have to start doing something different. You have to try something new because actually the economy is not doing very well and it hasn't been doing very well for a long time. So there was a certain legitimacy to her analysis, at least, to say, look, we need to do something

differently if we're going to achieve different results. We can't just carry on doing what we've always been doing. And in the end, I think all of that pressure together forced this radical prime minister to take one gamble too many and it blew up in her face. It's early here as we speak, Tom. You've got a couple hours on me. How did she resign? What happened over there? We had a completely chaotic day in Parliament yesterday where you just had sort of open rebellion and inter-party warfare within the Conservative Party over various issues. Complicated votes in the House of Commons where Tory MPs were just saying,

no, sod this, I'm not voting with her. We can't go on like this. This is absurd. This whole affair is inexcusable. It is just, it is a pitiful reflection on the Conservative Parliamentary Party at every level. Overnight, you had more chaos. And then this morning, you had a guy called Graham Brady, who is like a kind of Conservative Party bigwig. To get rid of a Conservative leader, you have to put in letters of no confidence, and you put them into this guy, Graham Brady. And once it got to a certain level, you know,

essentially more than half the party had put in these letters of no confidence, he then has the job of going to Number 10 Downing Street and saying to the Prime Minister, I'm sorry, Prime Minister, it's time to go. Number 10 have confirmed that Liz Truss is meeting Graham Brady. Number 10 have confirmed that this is at Liz Truss's request. The brutal thing about British politics is that there's really only one rule on which everything rests, and that is you have to command a majority of the House of Commons. If you cannot do that, you're done, you're gone. That's the whole point. If you can command a majority, then you're the Prime Minister. Now, she got to a point where she couldn't command a majority of

her own MPs. And, you know, therefore, she can't command a majority of the House of Commons itself. She just doesn't. She doesn't have a majority. She's got no power. So she had to resign. I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party. I am an anti-coaster I am an anarchoaster Don't know what I want

But I know how to get it I wanna destroy Possible Cause I Wanna be Anarchist And I'll be. And I'll be. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family.

And Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it. You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday. And she's very fortunate.

She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the Aura Frame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself.

And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM.

Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario.

We import two-thirds of our cheese. That is a disgrace. It's Today Explained. We're back with Tom McTague. He is London correspondent for The Atlantic magazine. Tom, Liz Truss is out. Does the United Kingdom have a prime minister right at this moment? Yes, we currently have a prime minister. She's still Liz Truss. So she's resigned as conservative party leader rather than prime minister. She'll remain in post, you know, with a finger on the nuclear button and all of that

kind of stuff until the conservative party choose a replacement. Now, she said that that will happen in this super speeded up time frame of a week. So what you're now going to see is all of the Conservative MPs trying to figure out who is going to emerge from their number to become her replacement. Let's talk about who's on deck. So you've got the man that she beat in the Conservative Party leadership contest over the summer, which is a guy called Rishi Sunak. I'm taking my ideas around the country. I'm talking to all of you, our members across the country, about what I think is best for our country

at a really difficult time. Now, this guy was Boris Johnson's finance minister. He's chancellor. He sort of steered the country through the pandemic. He was seen as a very effective politician, a very good communicator, competent guy. Now, as part of his job, he raised taxes to pay for lots of different things, more money to old age care, to the health service, and to deal with the enormous costs of the pandemic itself. So he really lost that conservative leadership contest because he defended that record of tax rises and didn't promise big tax cuts. He said, look, he was a tax-cutting guy by inclination.

He's a conservative. He supported Brexit, but he thought that it was the wrong time to do it. You would spook the markets. So he's got a lot of credibility in that sense, in that he predicted what actually happened and said he wouldn't do it. So I don't think the responsible thing to do right now

is launch into some unfunded spree of borrowing and more debt. That will just make inflation worse. It will make the problem longer. And therefore he lost the election, but he kind of won the argument, I guess. So he's kept his powder dry. He's not said anything during this whole crisis. So he is one standout potential. We've also got a guy called Jeremy Hunt, who's the current chancellor, who came in and reversed everything this trust promised and became this dominant figure overnight. Although the prime minister and I are both committed to cutting corporation tax, on Friday she listened to concerns about the mini budget and confirmed we will not proceed

with a cut to corporation tax announced. So there's him, and then there's another candidate from the election called Penny Mordaunt. I am going to keep calm and carry on, and I would suggest everyone else do the same. If she won, she would become Britain's fourth female prime minister. All of them conservatives, interestingly enough,

from Margaret Thatcher through to Theresa May, Liz Truss. So that, again, would be an interesting choice. She's more of a centrist Tory. She's still fairly conservative, but she's not really linked to one section of the party or the other. She might win as a kind of unity candidate, somebody who could bring all the different wings of the Tory party together in an attempt not to get annihilated at the next

election. So they're really the candidates at the moment. But of course, you know, this is crazy. This is a one week, you know, shootout. The person who's left holding the gun is going to be prime minister, which isn't a bad thing, is it, if you went to that competition now? Hey, Tom, forgive me if I missed a nuance or a wrinkle, but do British people vote on this? Yeah, no, no, we don't. Oh, wow. So actually, Liz Truss is a rare prime minister in never having faced an election as prime minister.

But usually they do. But it's a parliamentary system. So what happens is you elect a parliament, you know, like, you know, your House of Representatives or Senate. And Mitch McConnell or whoever emerges as the leader of the majority, you know, in that house, they become prime minister. That's how it works. But the difference between our system and your system is that in between the elections,

so the elections happen every four to five years for the House of Commons. It's not set like yours. It can't go longer than five. But if you were to elect a parliament like we did in 2019, for instance, with Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party, he emerges as prime minister. You can get rid of him, as we did, after three years. And there's another two years to run of the parliament. But somebody else can come and replace him. They don't need to go for an election until the end of the parliament, but somebody else can come and replace him. They don't need to go for an election until the end of the parliament. So Liz Truss, in theory, had until

January 2025 before she had to seek an election. And the same will be true in theory of this replacement. Hey, of all those names that you mentioned, there was one you left out. On this side of the Atlantic, we're reading that some of you in the UK want Boris Johnson back. Is that true? So yeah, I should have included him, really. Your petition launched by the website Conservative Post to return Boris Johnson to number 10 has received 10,000 signatures. Yep. Of course, he only left six weeks ago.

Look, I think right now it's unlikely. He's on holiday in the Caribbean, would you believe? He'd have to come back and throw his name in the ring. I'm sure he's tempted. The argument for Boris Johnson is a little bit like the argument for an election, right? He won a huge majority in 2019 on a manifesto to deliver certain things taking britain out the european union rebalancing the country so that

poorer parts of the country did better than they're currently doing all of these kind of promises that he made there were some people in the Conservative Party who say, look, he was dumped unfairly and he had a mandate from the public to deliver his manifesto. He should have been allowed to see that through for the five years. And then if he was going to be rejected, he should have been rejected by the country in an election rather than by his party in Parliament. Now, most Tory MPs that I speak to say, look, there might be truth in that argument, but he just proved unfit personally for office. His policies were kind of fine, and they were, you know, for the Conservative Party,

but he just was too reckless personally in office. He didn't pay enough attention to the rules. His behavior was unbecoming. And that's the reason he can't do it. Tom, what do you think this all says about the UK's place in the world? This is a powerful country that today looks really, really, really messy and even a bit immature. Yeah, well, I mean, I think they would be fair conclusions.

You know, a lot of people in Britain feel a bit embarrassed, or not just a bit embarrassed, but very embarrassed about what's going on. You know, the front page of The Economist today, slightly controversially, has Liz Truss mocked up as an Italian. And it's kind of saying that Britain is Britaly. We're turning into Italy, but without the good weather and the good food. So I think there is some truth in that other people are more pessimistic and say, well, actually, the really worrying scenario is being like Argentina,

you know, a kind of country that was at the turn of the 20th century was as wealthy as the United States. You know, it was a place where people from Europe went to just like they went to Chicago or Washington, they went to Buenos Aires. Obviously, that doesn't happen now, because Argentina is a very, an incredibly poor country that has been gripped by terrible politics, terrible economics, constant crises, from which it just doesn't seem capable of escaping. So that is that kind of doomsday pessimistic scenario i mean i don't share that i think in some ways the constitution here works in that if people aren't up to the job boris johnson on this trust they get kicked out pretty brutally and they get hopefully at some point replaced by somebody competent but you know right now it looks like the game is up for the Tories. They just, you know, they are just despised at the moment in the country because nobody accepts getting poorer,

you know, for a long time. And they've just made people poorer. But this is only a week. In a week's time, it looks like we're going to have a new prime minister who will come in. But look, generally, there's nobody who's questioning Britain's foreign policy support for Ukraine, the special relationship with the US, any of that. I think to some extent, what we're seeing is like the churn under the water, you know, when a swan is gliding over the surface. We've inverted that. All we can see right now is the legs spinning furiously underneath. But to some degree, the swan is just still on top, not very moving very fast,

but nothing's actually fundamentally changed. Today's show was produced by Miles Bryan and Avishai Artsy. It was edited by Matthew Collette and engineered by Paul Robert Mouncey. Fact-checking was a team effort led by Laura Bullard. Thanks to all. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Outro Music