That a lettuce outlasted Liz Truss is sorry indictment of UK politics

This is an editorial from China Daily.

She entered No 10 Downing Street with a radical agenda of tax cuts and deregulation, vowing to bring "the biggest change" to the United Kingdom's economic policy for 30 years.

Just 44 full days later, she conceded she "cannot deliver the mandate".

Even as she had to make that embarrassing policy U-turn by scrapping her all-important, though highly controversial, mini-Budget, and her cabinet's second-most important minister, home secretary Suella Braverman, quit on Wednesday, she appeared determined to stay on, calling herself a "fighter, not a quitter".

But she announced her resignation the next day, becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history, breaking the previous 118-day record George Canning set in 1827.

Liz Truss' premiership was so short and dramatic that the British media compared it with a wilting head of lettuce, with a tabloid declaring "the lettuce has officially outlasted Liz Truss".

Truss' departure won't make a significant dent in the "normal" functioning of the country. And things are unlikely to be conspicuously different no matter who takes over. After all, no general election is being held.

A contest will take place this week within the ruling Conservative Party to decide its next leader, who will by default become the next prime minister. Truss' successor is expected to be in place by Friday. Given the bitterly divided state of the ruling party, however, no one can tell how long the next prime minister may survive the internal squabbling.

As the Conservative Party's political elite scrambles to sustain the seemingly perpetual political merry-go-round, many have expressed concern about the degree of uncertainty and ineptness the country's political leadership has recently demonstrated, with foreign and trade policy continuity triggering prevailing worries.

Australia and India are only two countries that expressed theirs.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is worried the turbulence could ruin a deal their countries have finalized but not yet ratified. "I've been in office for five months. I've met two British prime ministers, so far, and I obviously will have contact with a third," he said. And the Indian government is reportedly concerned about Truss' exit catapulting the Indian-UK free trade deal into "a zone of uncertainty".

All over the world, people are trying to figure out what has led to what the Washington Post calls "a disastrous series of self-inflicted wounds" and "political death spiral" that ended Truss' premiership, or what in the words of the Irish Times is "a low moment in the history of British politics".

For her adamant preoccupation with an unrealistic tonic for the UK economy, which her rival for the post Rishi Sunak once called "fairytale", and subsequent poor execution and communication, the outgoing Tory leader should certainly bear the brunt of the blame. She did go, in her own words, "too far, too fast".

But the Sydney Morning Herald may be correct in observing "the debacle highlights a worrying trend evident in many Western democracies — the rise of politicians ill-prepared and ill-suited to high office".