Liz Truss’s fall: a warning to populists everywhere?

How the mighty have fallen, said Stephen Collinson on CNN. The UK used to be one of the “bastions of Western stability”, along with America. But allies who once regarded the country as “an exemplar of good governance” have been left “baffled” by its recent behaviour. It started with Britain’s perverse decision to pull out of the EU, which caused needless disruption and left the UK, as Barack Obama warned, at the “back of the queue” for a trade deal with the US.

Then came the collapse of Boris Johnson’s chaotic premiership. And now, in short order, has come the spectacular fall of Johnson’s successor Liz Truss, who succeeded in a matter of weeks in vaporising both her own credibility and London’s reputation for sound financial management. This latest disaster has “cemented Britain’s bewildering new image as a nation locked into a repeating cycle of self-harm”.

Truss’s fall is “a warning to populists everywhere”, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. The Tories have “pandered their way to ruin”, offering “simplistic” right-wing policies that don’t work. US Republicans should take note.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Britain’s standing has certainly suffered a blow, said an editorial in the same paper, but it’s in the interests of allies to now help the country “right itself”. Europe should help bring about a softer Brexit; the Biden administration should reinvigorate US-UK free-trade talks. “Britain should be more than an exporter of royal gossip and lurid political news.” Its friends must help it “regain its place in a liberal global order under attack by Russia, China and other adversaries of freedom”.

It has been an embarrassing few weeks for the UK, but it doesn’t reflect that badly on the country, said Brian Klaas in The Atlantic. At least its political system is still responsive enough to eject incompetent leaders. That’s not the case in America, where politics has become so polarised that even the worst candidates can count on a sizable level of partisan support. Donald Trump’s approval ratings never fell below 34%, no matter what he did.

Even now, Republican candidates fear losing primary elections if they so much as “whisper the mildest criticism of Trump”. The speed with which Truss was chucked out suggests Britain’s democracy is still in rude health. When you juxtapose recent events in Westminster with the past six years in Washington, “it’s clear that America’s democratic dysfunction is far worse”.