Liz Truss struggles to defend 'lasting less time than a lettuce'

Liz Truss, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has attempted to defend “lasting less time than a lettuce” in office.

In 2022, Truss famously spent 49 days as PM of the country after being chosen by the Conservative party to replace disgraced Boris Johnson as its leader.

During that time, Truss, along with Kwasi Kwarteng who was Chancellor at the time, was accused of “crashing the economy” with the infamous mini-budget.

After The Economist predicted Truss would have the “shelf-life of a lettuce”, a live stream of a head of lettuce was set up by the Daily Star and went viral. The lettuce went on to outlast Truss, who resigned after just over six weeks in the job.

The former PM is now flogging a book about her short time in office and in an interview with the BBC’s Chris Mason, she has been forced to defend her lack of longevity.

Mason told Truss: “Your time as prime minister left the UK as an international laughing stock.”

Truss seemed to squirm at Mason’s point and attempted to claim that it wasn’t true, but Mason brought up the lettuce incident and the fact the salad vegetable lasted longer than she did in office.

Truss argued: “This is just pathetic, you know, point-scoring. This is the kind of thing that obsesses the kind of, what I describe as the ‘London elite’.”

The former PM then appeared to blame her downfall on the Bank of England, claiming: “I put forward what were perfectly rational policies that I’d won a leadership election on…but what happened was that I was undermined by organisations like the Bank of England.”

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