Liz Truss, Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, suffered further political humiliation on Friday when she sensationally lost her seat in parliament in the British general election.
Truss’s defeat comes at a time when all of her predecessors’ constituencies have swung to either Labour or the Liberal Democrats since the Tories came to power in 2010 – a harsh indictment of the Conservatives’ 14 years in power.
Truss, who stirred up financial turmoil during her 49 chaotic days in office in 2022, lost to the Labour Party by 630 votes in the Norfolk South West constituency in eastern England.
Labor candidate Terry Jermey overturned Truss’s landslide majority of more than 26,000 that she secured at the last election in 2019 — a notional 27.85 per cent shift.
His defeat, announced shortly before 7:00 am (0600 GMT), capped a shock performance for Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, as Keir Starmer’s Labour opposition party won a landslide victory, returning to power after 14 years.
Truss, a member of parliament since 2010, was called to the stage to gentle clapping after other candidates were made to wait for several minutes. She left without giving a speech.
But he later told the BBC: “I think the problem we had as Conservatives was that we didn’t deliver enough of the policies that people wanted.”
Asked if she bore any responsibility, she said: “I agree. I was part of it. That’s absolutely true.”
Truss – whose tenure as prime minister was described as shorter than iceberg lettuce – said she had “a lot to think about” when asked if she wanted to stay in politics.
Sunak retained his seat in northern England, but the Tories also lost the seats of Truss’s predecessors Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron.
Labour held on to Johnson’s former constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in north-west London, while May’s former seat of Maidenhead, near the capital, was won by the smaller Liberal Democrat party.
The Liberal Democrats also won Cameron’s old seat of Witney in Oxfordshire.
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