Wikipedia editors have added a new landing page that asks readers to be more specific if they’re searching for the “2022 United Kingdom government crisis.” And it speaks to just how poorly things went for conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss, who resigned her post Thursday.
Specifically, Wikipedia would like to know if you mean the crisis in July when high-ranking politicians in former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cabinet were quitting en masse, ultimately forcing Johnson to resign as PM? Or are you looking for information about the October crisis, a clusterfuck where Truss stepped on rake after rake, clearly showing herself to be completely inept at running the country?
Wikipedia added the disambiguation page on Wednesday after editors kept getting confused about which political crisis was being written about. The next day, Truss stepped down, the shortest-serving British PM in history.
Why is the British government falling apart?
Truss, who was sworn in on September 6 and left just over a month later, started her tenure with a budget proposal that would have handed the wealthiest a big tax break. The British government had planned to borrow money to give this money to the rich, something that was obviously a disastrous idea. The value of the British pound subsequently sank, and pretty soon, the idea had to be scrapped in order to ensure the economy didn’t get any worse. The British Telecom pension program, one of the country’s largest, lost $12.44 billion in the process, according to Reuters.
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More recently, Truss contradicted herself on the plan for pensions on Wednesday, and has shown herself to be completely incompetent, while it became abundantly clear those in her own party clearly didn’t trust her. British conservative politician Suella Braverman was forced to resign as home secretary on Wednesday, roughly the U.S. equivalent of the Secretary of State. There have been three different home secretaries in the past six weeks, as the Guardian notes.
To put it more succinctly, it’s just chaos in UK politics at the moment. Public polling shows Truss was the least popular prime minister in the history of the country’s polling, with 80% of people in the UK having an unfavorable view of her. But that poll was done last Friday, meaning she’s likely even less popular now.
Amusingly, the Daily Star newspaper in the UK set up a livestream on YouTube of a head of lettuce, asking which will last longer, Liz Truss or lettuce with a shelf life of 10 days? A pack of tofu was added on Wednesday, a reference to now-former home secretary Braverman’s recent comments referring to climate protesters as “tofu-eating wokerati.” After seven days, the lettuce won out.
Conservatives in the UK are speaking pretty openly about how much they despise Truss, with Conservative MP Charles Walker telling the BBC he doesn’t think there’s any coming back from this.
“This is absolute disgrace. As a Tory MP of seventeen years, who’s never been a minister, who’s got on with it loyally most of the time, I think it’s a shambles and a disgrace, and I think it’s utterly appalling,” Walker said.
“I’m livid, and I really shouldn’t say this, but I hope all those people that put Liz Truss in Number 10, I hope it was worth it,” Walker continued. “I hope it was worth it for the ministerial red box, I hope it was worth it to sit around the cabinet table. Because the damage they have done to our party is extraordinary.”
Walker went on to call Truss “talentless” and said many of his fellow politicians and their constituents were worried about how they would be able to pay their mortgages with Truss’s complete mismanaging of the economy.
“I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of talentless people putting their tick in the right box, not because it’s in the national interest, but because it’s in their own personal interest to achieve ministerial position,” Walker said.
British lawmakers were were pissed, and they weren’t going to be quiet about it anymore.
“I personally think she has to go tonight. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” one anonymous conservative politician said, according to a political journalist for the Telegraph. And go she did.
“My understanding is a shedload of letters have gone in today. After tonight, you’re going to see absolute chaos. The next 24 hours are going to be hell for Liz.”
