Another Day, Another Prime Ministerial Resignation: Liz Truss Resigns

As I write these words Elizabeth Truss is announcing her resignation from the Prime Ministership of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the shortest tenure of anyone in that job in the history of that office.

I don't think anyone's shocked by the fact of the event given the fiscal-monetary train wreck of her government's budget.

But the point is that what we vaguely knew was coming has happened, which makes it not unfair to step back a moment from the multitude of little factoids, baseless speculations and trivial comments with which the media is constantly overwhelming everyone to try and relate this to the larger picture.

As things stand Ms. Truss is the country's fourth Prime Minister in the twelve-and-a-half years since the Conservatives ended New Labour's single patch in office since 1979 --while in the latter part of that period the occupant of 10 Downing Street will have changed three times (with Theresa May replaced by Boris Johnson replaced by Truss replaced by . . . Johnson again after departing the job a mere six weeks ago, if he has his way).

Personally when I bother discussing such matters my inclination is to focus on policy, not politics, with this certainly my emphasis when writing about the records of Thatcher and Blair. But of course one can go only so far in separating the two--not least because turmoil in politics tends to indicate a ship of state adrift on the high seas. Exemplary of the fact is that this turnover at 10 Downing Street has been nothing like since at least Suez crisis-era Britain (with Eden giving way to Macmillan--in this case, over and over and over again), with the same, we have been told, going for the fortunes of sterling.

Still, if Britain's drift captures the headlines today I can't think of a single major country that is not in pretty much the same sad state as internationally the quality of governance races to the bottom. Truly, looking at the "world leaders" of today it seems to me that had Mike Judd's Idiocracy contained an international summit scene the vast majority, at least, would not have been out of place in the scene--all as the mainstream media in every country, whose talking heads these days routinely make a Ron Burgundy look like a man of profundity and gravitas, go on playing their parts as courtiers to those holders of high office they treat like latterday Sun Kings. (Indeed, the word courtier seems the more appropriate given how suspect having so many changes of head of government without a general election can seem to anyone with the slightest regard for pretenses of democracy . . .)

All of these things are infinitely more worthy of being called "disgraces" than a country which happens to neighbor some of the most renowned cheese-making countries on Earth importing and consuming their fine products.