British prime minister steps down after tumultuous six-week tenure

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• Judy Woodruff:

  Words like shambles and abject chaos and a disgrace are being used to describe this day in British politics.

  Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned her post today after fewer than seven weeks on the job. Her Conservative Party is vowing to pick a new prime minister by next Friday. But, tonight, the British people are trying to understand what happened and where they go from here.

  Nick Schifrin begins our coverage.

• Nick Schifrin:

  In more than 300 years of British constitutional history, no prime minister led for less time than Liz Truss.

• Liz Truss, British Prime Minister:

  Given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.

• Speaker:

  Liz Truss is elected as the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

  (APPLAUSE)

• Nick Schifrin:

  It was a turbulent, tumultuous, and torturous six weeks for Truss since she won the Conservative Party leadership and took over as prime minister from Boris Johnson following his resignation just three months ago.

• Boris Johnson, Former British Prime Minister:

  Hasta la vista, baby.

  (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

• Liz Truss:

  I have three priorities for our economy, growth, growth and growth.

  (APPLAUSE)

• Nick Schifrin:

  To achieve that, Truss proposed the largest package of tax cuts in 50 years, presented by Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor of the exchequer, the equivalent of the Treasury secretary.

  Kwasi Kwarteng, Chancellor of the Exchequer: It is an important principle that people should keep more of the money they earn. And it is good policy, Mr. Speaker, to boost the incentives for work and enterprise.

• Nick Schifrin:

  But the tax cuts did not coincide with any spending reductions. And they were submitted without economic forecasts. They triggered an economic and political domino effect.

  The pound dropped to the lowest level against the dollar on record. Government bond prices collapsed. Borrowing rates hit a 20-year high. At first, Truss reversed only a planned cut to the highest tax rate.

• Liz Truss:

  We can't give in to those who say Britain can't go faster.

• Nick Schifrin:

  But then she fired the chancellor…

• Liz Truss:

  I have asked Jeremy Hunt to become the new chancellor.

• Nick Schifrin:

  … who on Monday repealed the very economic platform on which she was elected.

  Jeremy Hunt, British Chancellor of the Exchequer: We will reverse almost all the tax measures announced in the growth plan three weeks ago.

• Nick Schifrin:

  By last night, a senior Cabinet member resigned. Truss' approval rating was 10 percent, her disapproval rating 80 percent. More than a dozen fellow Conservatives pushed her to resign.

  And party leadership lost control of its members in Parliament the country of Shakespeare seemingly reduced to one word.

• Speaker:

  A complete and utter chaos.

• Speaker:

  It is total, absolute, abject chaos.

• Keir Starmer, Labor Party Leader:

  Utter chaos from the Conservatives.

• Speaker:

  The deputy chief whip was reported to have left the scene, saying: "I'm absolutely effing serious. I just don't effing care anymore."

• Speaker:

  I think it's a shambles and a disgrace.

• Nick Schifrin:

  You have to go back 195 years to find the last British prime minister ousted from office in fewer than five months.

  The Conservative Party is allowed to pick Truss' replacement. But Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labor Party, called for a national election at least two years ahead of schedule.

• Keir Starmer:

  What a mess. This is not just a soap opera at the top of the Tory Party. It's doing huge damage to our economy and to the reputation of our country.

• Nick Schifrin:

  French President Emmanuel Macron responded today with a wish.

• Emmanuel Macron, French President (through translator):

  In the current context, a context of war, of tensions over energy and the wider crisis, it is important for Britain to regain political stability, and that's all I want.

• Nick Schifrin:

  President Biden today praised Truss foreign policy.

  Joe Biden, President of the United States: She was a good partner on Russia and Ukraine. And the British are going to solve their problems. And — but she was a good partner.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And then, asked whether Britain's economic troubles could affect the U.S.:

• President Joe Biden:

  No, I don't think they're that consequential.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And so it is for the United Kingdom today, its influence diminished, its politics disorderly, and its economic outlook cloudy, on the verge of its third prime minister in four months.

  And to discuss Truss' resignation, I'm joined by Bronwen Maddox, the director and chief executive of Chatham House, an independent policy institute in London.

  Welcome to the "NewsHour." Thank you very much.

  Let's just take stock. You just heard the words that have been used all day, chaos, disgrace. In your opinion, how shambolic is this moment?

• Bronwen Maddox, Chatham House:

  It's pretty hard to calibrate.

  We have had six years of versions of chaos, constitutional showdowns Parliament vs. the judges, Parliament against itself and so on. This is pretty high in the ranking, though. To last only 44 days in — as a prime minister is a record. It's a record of centuries. It makes Liz Truss, as the joke is going this evening, a question in a pub quiz.

  And it leaves her with really nothing by way of a legacy, except this memory of chaos. It leaves the country with higher interest rates. Even when her new chancellor stepped in and started reassuring things, turning over things, there's still a legacy of these past not even six weeks that really stings people in their wallets, and has left a very, very bitter taste.

• Nick Schifrin:

  In the last six weeks, Boris Johnson left. The queen died. Truss has resigned. And, as you just said, there is a real cost of living crisis.

  I know this is a hard question about a country with tens of millions of people, but what is the mood of the United Kingdom today?

• Bronwen Maddox:

  The mood is worried and really uncertain.

  You put all those things together. The queen's death was a huge shock, even though, for the most obvious reasons, people could feel it coming, but still didn't believe it would come. Changes of prime minister, this is going to be the third within 2022. It's going to be the fifth within six years.

  This doesn't feel normal to a country that has prided itself on a bit of an ability to change more than people in other countries think, but basically being a byword for stability, for the rule of law, have been good at this stuff of governance.

  And it's really shaken the country in its opinion of itself. And it's given a lot of people just a great deal of fear about what comes next.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Right as there's a lot of fears domestically in terms of prices, inflation up 10.1 percent. That is a 40-year high. The natural gas price this year has risen by 90 percent.

  How do these politics affect British pocketbooks?

• Bronwen Maddox:

  They are the subject of constant conversation. And they turn quite immediately into strikes, which we're having on the railways, it feels like almost constantly at the moment, and a sense of — there's a lot of talk about, is it back to the 1970s, which was a really dark, low point in British fortunes?

  And those of us who were who kids then can remember doing homework by candlelight with power cuts and so on. It's a really sort of a kind of shocking, shaking feeling that people have. After decades of success and improvement, when the U.K. was doing much better than most of Europe, suddenly to be thrown back, like some kind of Snakes and Ladders board, thrown back to a much less successful part of its past.

  Now, I don't think all that is justified. I think there are enormous strengths in the country, and it can come out of this. But there is no question — you're asking about the mood. The mood is really pretty worried.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Let's talk about what's next.

  The Conservatives have set the bar higher than it usually is to enter the race. Any candidate needs support from 100 members of Parliament. The deadline is Monday. Among the likely candidates, likely to see former Chancellor Rishi Sunak, current leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, even Boris Johnson.

  Who do you think is next?

• Bronwen Maddox:

  Oh, I think Rishi Sunak.

  And I think that would be the right choice for the party. But Rishi Sunak was the runner-up to Liz Truss. He had more support among M.P.s. And that's where the vote is happening now. He had a set of policies, economic policies, which are almost identical to those ones that Jeremy Hunt, now the chancellor of the past few days, has been embracing.

  It's precaution. It's for classic Conservative set of economic policies. And Boris Johnson is still Boris Johnson with parliamentary investigations up against him for his behavior during COVID.

• Nick Schifrin:

  We heard President Biden there earlier praise Truss for supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia.

  Senior U.S. officials tell me they do not expect any kind of change in that policy. Do you believe that the next U.K. prime minister would have any changes to British foreign policy?

• Bronwen Maddox:

  Not over Ukraine.

  That is the one solid plank of British foreign policy at the moment. And it's something that Boris Johnson did well. And I think that is a solid plank that any leader coming along, the next Conservative leader or Labor leader, would seize on, because it does reinforce Britain's sense of itself in the world.

  And that is the thing that is so shaky at the moment. The most important bit of foreign policy, though, is probably to work out what on earth relations are with the European Union, particularly what kind of deal is going to be done over Northern Ireland and moving goods between the mainland, which is called Great Britain, and Northern Ireland.

  And most roads in foreign policy lead to the European Union, if you're in the U.K., because it is so close and it is the big trading partner. And there are now so many disagreements. So, Ukraine, in a way, is easy. E.U. is inescapable, but difficult.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Bronwen Maddox, Chatham House, thank you very much.

• Bronwen Maddox:

  My pleasure.

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