World
Contenders who could replace resigned UK PM Truss
Liz Truss' resignation as British Prime Minister on Thursday triggered another leadership race — the second in just four months — for the U.K.'s fractured and demoralized Conservative Party.
Truss, who quit after just 45 days in office, said her successor will be chosen in a leadership contest to be completed by the end of next week. Graham Brady, a senior Conservative lawmaker who oversees the party’s leadership challenges, said each candidate must secure 100 nominations from legislators to run and that the race will conclude by next Friday.
Former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, ex-Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt and Defense Secretary Ben Wallace are among those considered credible contenders for the top job. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson may also return. Jeremy Hunt, who has been brought in as new Treasury chief to steer the economy, has ruled out running.
Whoever wins will become the fifth British prime minister in six years.
Here's a look at the potential runners and riders:
RISHI SUNAK, FORMER TREASURY CHIEF
Sunak, 42, came second to Truss in the last Conservative leadership race, gathering 60,399 votes compared to her 81,326.
He quit as Treasury chief in July, in protest against then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson's leadership. In the contest to replace Johnson, Sunak positioned himself as the candidate who tells hard truths about Britain's public finances. He argued that climbing inflation must be controlled first, and called promises by Truss and other rivals to immediately slash taxes reckless “fairy tales.”
Sunak was proved right when Truss' unfunded tax-cutting economic stimulus package tanked the British pound and triggered chaos in the markets in September.
Sunak became Treasury chief in 2020 and steered Britain's slumping economy through the coronavirus pandemic. He oversaw billions of pounds in government handouts to help businesses and workers hard hit by COVID-19.
Sunak was regarded by many as the Conservatives' brightest rising star. Born to Indian parents who moved to Britain from East Africa, Sunak attended the exclusive Winchester College private school and studied at Oxford. Some see his elite education and work for the investment bank Goldman Sachs and a hedge fund as a liability because it makes him seem out of touch with ordinary voters.
In the past year he faced heavy criticism for being slow to respond to Britain's cost-of-living crisis. His reputation also took a hit after he was fined by police for attending a lockdown-flouting birthday party at Downing Street in June 2020.
Some also criticized him following revelations that his wife, Akshata Murthy, avoided paying taxes on her overseas income.
PENNY MORDAUNT, HOUSE OF COMMONS LEADER
Mordaunt, 49, came third after Sunak and Truss in the last Tory leadership race, when she ran with a campaign named “PM 4 PM.” Mordaunt did not hold a senior post in Johnson’s Cabinet, and she positioned herself as offering a clean break from his scandal-tainted government.
A former international trade minister, Mordaunt is popular among Conservative lawmakers. Some believe she could be the right candidate to help heal the party's divisions. But she is largely an unknown figure to most Britons, and outside Conservative circles she remains best known for appearing on the 2014 reality TV show “Splash!”
Mordaunt played a prominent role in the pro-Brexit campaign. She was the first woman to become British defense secretary in 2019 -- though she was removed by Johnson after just three months in the post because she had backed another candidate for party leader, Jeremy Hunt.
SUELLA BRAVERMAN, EX-HOME SECRETARY
Braverman, 42, resigned as Home Secretary late Wednesday, with a scathing letter criticizing Truss' “tumultuous” premiership. Her move kicked off a chaotic night in British politics that ended in Truss' resignation hours later.
A former barrister who became England’s attorney general in 2020, Braverman was the first to put her hat in the ring during this summer's leadership race to replace Johnson.
During her short tenure as Home Secretary, a top government post overseeing immigration and counterterrorism, Braverman vowed to crack down hard on asylum seekers, saying it was her “dream” to see a flight deporting those seeking refuge in Britain to Rwanda. She also wanted to pull the U.K. out of the European Convention on Human rights.
She made headlines — and was mocked by opponents — when she complained recently in Parliament that travel disruptions caused by trade union strikes were to be blamed on left-wing, “tofu-eating wokerati."
BEN WALLACE, DEFENSE SECRETARY
Wallace, a 52-year-old army veteran, is popular within the Conservative Party. He has won admirers for his straight talk, particularly among Conservative lawmakers who pressed for the U.K. to increase its defense spending.
Wallace has raised his profile as a key government voice in Britain’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine. But he recently said he wanted to remain in his current job. Earlier this week, he reportedly said “I want to be the Secretary of State for Defense until I finish” when asked if he wanted the top job.
BORIS JOHNSON, FORMER PRIME MINISTER
There was intense speculation Thursday that Johnson, 58, may return and put himself forward as prime minister again — just weeks after he was forced out of office by a series of ethics scandals.
Within hours of Truss' resignation, several Conservative allies of Johnson's voiced their support for him to return.
“The only person who has a mandate from the general public is Boris Johnson," said one lawmaker, Marco Longhi. “He is the only person who can discharge the mandate from the people."
Johnson led the Conservatives to their biggest win in decades in the 2019 general election, largely on the back of his promise to “get Brexit done.”
But his time in office was overshadowed by scandals over alcohol-fueled parties held at his official residence while national COVID-19 restrictions were in place. He still faces an ongoing investigation by Parliament's privileges committee into whether he lied to lawmakers about COVID-rule breaking at Downing Street.
He was forced to announce his resignation on July 7 after former allies in his Cabinet joined a mass exodus of government officials protesting his leadership.
EU leaders avoid deep rift on gas price cap at energy summit
European Union leaders struggled to find immediate practical solutions on how to deal with the energy crisis but avoided an open rift between Germany and France on Friday that would have exposed a divided bloc as it confronts Russian President Vladimir Putin over his war in Ukraine.
After daylong talks in Brussels dragged well into the night, the 27 EU leaders papered over divisions between some of the biggest member states and at least agreed to continue working on ways to impose a gas price cap in case of big price increases.
French President Emmanuel Macron highlighted his work with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to create a veneer of unity after talks that started early Thursday. He said that together with close technical advisers, “I will see Chancellor Scholz in Paris next week so that we can move forward, with our teams, on all the issues.”
Scholz said the main issue was curbing “spikes” in gas trading that may last only a few hours but still send prices excessively upward. He said measures to counter that should be further examined.
“How can we avoid these spikes? There is still a lot of concrete work to be done. But we must look at ways to contain it, which certainly makes sense,” Scholz said.
When the axis between Paris and Berlin is aligned, usually the rest of the EU follows.
“There is a strong and unanimously shared determination to act together, as Europeans, to achieve three goals: lowering prices, ensuring security of supply and continuing to work to reduce demand," said summit host Charles Michel, the EU Council president.
Diplomats said the execution of the proposals, including the possibility of a price cap, should be first properly assessed by energy ministers next Tuesday and might even need a new summit of leaders in the coming weeks.
“There is a lot of work ahead," said Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. “We are pushing ourselves into unchartered territory, where we don’t have experience yet."
To make sure the runaway cost of gas doesn’t further tank struggling EU economies, the Commission has proposed a system to pool buying of gas and offered a compromise that would allow for a correction mechanism to kick in in exceptional circumstances.
Countries like the Netherlands and Germany were loathe to start such market intervention, but agreed to study a system that would be failproof and not allow suppliers to stop delivering and go to more lucrative markets.
“It is incredibly complex but you see that everyone wants to get the gas prize further down, but in a way that we continue to get gas deliveries and that it doesn't move to Asia or Latin America. We need it here, too,” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
In addition, the leaders are also pushing for the creation of a new LNG gas index better reflecting the market following the drastic reduction of imports of pipeline gas from Russia.
Divisions were so big at the start of the summit that agreeing on further exploration of the plan proposed by the Commission was seen as almost an achievement in itself.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said a price cap would send suppliers away. The “gas price cap is like going to a bar and telling the bartender you want to pay half price for your beer. Not going to happen,” he said on Twitter.
The traditional driving duo of the EU — Germany and France — were in opposing camps, with Germany expressing doubts and holding off plans for the price cap, while most others want to push on.
Scholz said any dispute was on the method, not the goal. “Prices for gas, for oil, for coal, must sink; electricity prices must sink, and this is something that calls for a joint effort by all of us in Europe,” he said.
Natural gas prices spiraled out of control over the summer as EU nations sought to outbid one another to fill up their reserves for winter. The member states have already agreed to cut demand for gas by 15% over the winter. They have also committed to filling gas-storage facilities to at least 80% of capacity by November and — as a way of reducing gas-fired power generation — to reducing peak demand for electricity by at least 5%.
The question of possible EU gas-price caps has moved steadily up the political agenda for months as the energy squeeze tightened, with 15 countries such as France and Italy pushing for such blunt intervention.
At the opening of the summit, the need for rock-solid EU unity in confronting Russia was highlighted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who addressed the 27 national leaders by video conference from Kyiv, asking for continued help to get his nation through the winter.
Russia is increasingly relying on drone strikes against Ukraine’s energy grid and civilian infrastructure and sowing panic with hits on Ukrainian cities, tactics that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called “war crimes” and “pure terror” on Wednesday.
Diplomats are already assessing more sanctions to come. But Orban’s perceived friendliness toward the Kremlin makes life tougher. Even though the previous EU sanctions targeting Russia have been approved unanimously, it has increasingly become difficult to keep Orban on board by agreeing to exemptions.
Iranian troops in Crimea supporting Russian drone attacks, says US
The White House said Thursday the U.S. has evidence that Iranian troops are “directly engaged on the ground” in Crimea supporting Russian drone attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure and civilian population.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Iran has sent a “relatively small number” of personnel to Crimea, a part of Ukraine unilaterally annexed by Russia in contravention of international law in 2014, to assist Russian troops in launching Iranian-made drones against Ukraine.
Members of a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps were dispatched to assist Russian forces on how to use the drones, according to a British government statement.
“The information we have is that the Iranians have put trainers and tech support in Crimea, but it’s the Russians who are doing the piloting,” Kirby said.
He added that the Biden administration was looking at imposing new sanctions on Tehran and would look for ways to make it harder for Tehran to sell such weapons to Russia.
The U.S. first revealed this summer that Russia was purchasing Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles to launch against Ukraine. Iran has denied selling its munitions to Russia.
U.S. officials believe that Iran may have deployed military personnel to assist the Russians in part because of the Russian’s lack of familiarity with the Iran-made drones. Declassified U.S. intelligence findings showed that Russians faced technical problems with the Iranian drones soon after taking delivery of the weapons in August.
“The systems themselves were suffering failures and not performing to the standards that apparently the customers expected,” Kirby said. “So the Iranians decided to move in some trainers and some technical support to help the Russians use them with with better lethality.”
Read: Ukraine’s Kyiv attacked with Iranian-made kamikaze drones
The Biden administration released further details about Iran’s involvement in assisting Russia’s war in Ukraine at a sensitive moment. The administration has levied new sanctions against Iran over the government’s brutal crackdown on antigovernment protest in recent weeks spurred by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in Iranian security custody.
Morality police had detained Amini last month for not properly covering her hair with the Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab, which is mandatory for Iranian women. Amini collapsed at a police station and died three days later.
Her death and the subsequent unrest have come as the administration tries to bring Iran back into compliance with the nuclear deal that was brokered by the Obama administration and scrapped by the Trump administration.
But Kirby said that the administration has little hope for reviving the Iran nuclear deal soon.
“We’re not focused on the on the diplomacy at this point,” Kirby said. “What we are focused on is making sure that we’re holding the regime accountable for the way they’re treating peaceful protesters in their country and supporting those protesters.”
The White House spoke out about Iranian assistance to Russia as Britain on Thursday announced new sanctions on Iranian officials and businesses as the Russians use the drones to bombard civilian infrastructure.
“These cowardly drone strikes are an act of desperation,” British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in a statement. “By enabling these strikes, these individuals and a manufacturer have caused the people of Ukraine untold suffering. We will ensure that they are held to account for their actions.”
Among the individuals hit with asset freezes and travel bans by the British were Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, chairman of the armed forces general staff overseeing the army branches supplying Russia with drones; Brigadier General Seyed Hojjatollah Qureishi, a key Iranian negotiator in the deal;. and Brigadier General Saeed Aghajani, the head the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Aerospace Force UAV Command.
Shahed Aviation Industries, the Iranian manufacturer of the drones being used by Russia, was also hit by an asset freeze.
At least 60 killed in Chad protests
Chadian security forces opened fire on anti-government demonstrators in the country’s two largest cities Thursday killing at least 60 people, the government spokesman and a morgue official said.
Authorities imposed a curfew after the violence, which came amid demonstrations in the central African nation against interim leader Mahamat Idriss Deby’s two-year extension of power.
Chadian government spokesman Aziz Mahamat Saleh said 30 people were dead in the capital, N’Djamena. Organizers of the march, though, placed the toll higher, at 40.
Another 32 protesters were killed in Chad’s second-largest city, Moundou, according to an official in the city’s morgue. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said more than 60 people were wounded.
Other protests were held in the towns of Doba and Sarh.
Read: 15 killed, 50 injured in anti-UN protests in Congo’s east
These were the deadliest anti-government protests since Deby took over last year in the wake of his father’s assassination after more than three decades in power. Officials said the late President Idriss Deby Itno was killed by rebels while visiting Chadian troops on the battlefield in the country’s north in April 2021.
At the main reference hospital in N’Djamena, overwhelmed doctors tended to scores of people with gunshot wounds. Some of the wounded were taken to Liberty Hospital by army vehicles and bore signs of having been tortured, witnesses said.
Witnesses say demonstrators began to blow whistles at 3 a.m. all over the capital of N’Djamena. Police fired tear gas at the crowds but the demonstrators continued advancing and their numbers grew. It was then that security forces opened fire, leaving protesters struggling to gather the dead from the scene amid the tear gas.
Among those killed was a Chadian journalist, Narcisse Oredje, who worked for CEFOD radio and was struck by a bullet.
Truss resignation: UK’s political, economic turmoil far from over
British Prime Minister Liz Truss quit Thursday after a tumultuous and historically brief term in which her economic policies roiled financial markets and a rebellion in her political party obliterated her authority.
Truss became the third Conservative prime minister to be toppled in as many years, extending the instability that has shaken Britain since it broke off from the European Union and leaving its leadership in limbo as the country faces a cost-of-living crisis and looming recession.
“I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” Truss acknowledged in a statement delivered outside her 10 Downing Street office.
Financial markets breathed a sigh of relief, but Truss leaves a divided party seeking a leader who can unify its warring factions. Truss, who said she will remain in office until a replacement is chosen, has been prime minister for just 45 days and will almost certainly become the shortest-serving leader in British history.
The ruling Conservative Party said it would choose a successor by the end of next week. Potential contenders include former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, who lost to Truss in the last leadership contest, House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace — and Boris Johnson, the former prime minister ousted in July over a series of ethics scandals.
The low-tax, low-regulation economic policies that got Truss elected proved disastrous in the real world at a time of soaring inflation and weak growth.
Her Sept. 23 economic plan included a raft of tax cuts — paid for by government borrowing — that investors worried Britain couldn’t afford. That pummeled the value of the pound and drove up the cost of mortgages, causing economic pain for people and businesses already struggling from an economy yet to emerge from the pain of the pandemic.
That tumult resulted in the replacement of Truss’ Treasury chief, multiple policy U-turns and a breakdown of discipline in the governing Conservative Party.
Truss bowed out just a day after vowing to stay in power, saying she was “a fighter and not a quitter.” But she couldn’t hold on any longer after a senior minister quit her government with a barrage of criticism and a vote in the House of Commons descended into chaos and acrimony just days after she was forced to abandon many of her economic policies.
The pound rose about 1% Thursday to around $1.13 after Truss’ resignation.
But where the Conservative Party goes from here is not clear. Party chiefs hope lawmakers can rally around a unity candidate, but that seems unlikely in a party whose myriad factions — from hard-right Brexiteers to centrist “One Nation” Tories — are at each other’s throats.
“Nobody has a route plan. It’s all sort of hand-to-hand fighting on a day-to-day basis,” Conservative lawmaker Simon Hoare told the BBC on Thursday before Truss resigned.
Read: Pound rises against dollar as investors react to UK PM Truss' resignation
“It’s time for the prime minister to go,” Conservative lawmaker Miriam Cates said, echoing the sentiments of many others.
Newspapers that usually support the Conservatives were vitriolic. An editorial in the Daily Mail on Thursday was headlined: “The wheels have come off the Tory clown car.”
Her downfall was so rapid that the party was unable to spell out exactly how the selection of a new leader would unfold, and whether the party’s 172,000 members, or only its 357 lawmakers, would get a say. The new leader is due to be in place by Oct. 28.
Truss’ resignation is the culmination of months of simmering discontent inside the Conservative Party as its poll ratings with the public have plunged.
Johnson’s government was revealed to have held a series of parties in government buildings during period of coronavirus lockdown, when people in Britain were barred from mingling with friends and family or even visiting dying relatives.
The party spent the summer picking a replacement as the economy worsened amid spiking energy prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Against that backdrop, many people — including many Conservatives — felt Truss’ tax-cutting policies would do little to help ordinary people struggling to make ends meet.
Whoever succeeds Truss will become the country’s third prime minister this year. A national election doesn’t have to be held until 2024, but opposition parties demanded one be held now, saying the government lacks democratic legitimacy.
Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer accused the Conservatives of presiding over “utter chaos.”
“This is doing huge damage to our economy and the reputation of our country,” he said. “We must have a chance at a fresh start. We need a general election – now.”
Truss’ political unraveling began after she and her Treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, unveiled an economic plan with 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in unfunded tax cuts. That hammered of the value of the pound and increased the cost of U.K. government borrowing. The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent the crisis from spreading to the wider economy and putting pension funds at risk.
Read: Temporary ban on tourism at Rowangchhari and Ruma to fight ‘militants and criminals’
Truss then fired Kwarteng, and his replacement, Hunt, scrapped almost all of Truss’ tax cuts, along with energy subsidies and her promise of no public spending cuts. He said the government will need to save billions of pounds and there are “many difficult decisions” to be made before he sets out a medium-term fiscal plan on Oct. 31.
Speaking to lawmakers for the first time since the U-turn, Truss apologized Wednesday and admitted she had made mistakes during her six weeks in office, but insisted that by changing course she had “taken responsibility and made the right decisions in the interest of the country’s economic stability.”
Still, Truss said she would not resign — a resolve that was short-lived. Within hours a senior Cabinet minister, Home Secretary Suella Braverman, quit, blasting Truss in her resignation letter, saying she had “concerns about the direction of this government.”
For many Conservative lawmakers, the final straw was a Wednesday evening vote over fracking for shale gas that produced chaotic scenes in Parliament, with party whips accused of using heavy-handed tactics to gain votes.
Chris Bryant, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party, said he “saw members being physically manhandled ... and being bullied.” Conservative officials denied this.
Truss’ departure on Thursday sparked jubilation for the tabloid Daily Star, which has set up a livestream featuring a photo of the prime minister beside a head of lettuce to see which would last longer.
“This lettuce outlasted Liz Truss!” it proclaimed Thursday.
While many Britons joined the world in laughing at the lettuce joke, Bronwyn Maddox, director of international affairs think-tank Chatham House, said “there is no question that the U.K.’s standing in the world has been severely battered by this episode and by the revolving door of prime ministers.”
She said Truss’ successor would need to have policies “based on economic stability, but need also to include a resolution of the relationship with Europe; much of the upheaval represents the bitter aftermath of Brexit.”
‘A cautionary tale’: World reacts to UK PM Truss’ resignation
The UK's economic and political turmoil over the past few weeks - culminating in nearly all of Liz Truss's original finance plans now being axed - has been watched around the world.
It is rare for close allies to comment on each other's key policies at home - and if they do, it's unlikely to be an outright criticism.
But at the weekend US President Joe Biden weighed in, saying Ms Truss's original plan was a "mistake" and it was "predictable" that she would have to backtrack.
"I wasn't the only one that thought it was a mistake," Mr Biden said. "I disagree with the policy, but that's up to Great Britain."
The EU's economy chief, meanwhile, said there were "lessons to learn" from what is happening in the UK.
"What happened shows how volatile is the situation and so how prudent we should be also with our fiscal and monetary mix," said Paolo Gentiloni on Friday after Ms Truss fired ex-Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
The world's media has been far more brutal.
"Liz Truss, who's been the British PM for barely six weeks, has managed to drag her party and her country into a debacle the depth of which the country has never before sunk to. And less so at such speed," says an editorial in Colombian daily El Colombiano.
Its headline suggests what the PM might be known for: "Liz Truss the Brief?"
"Clinging to her ideology, far removed from the reality facing the country, Truss exemplifies to perfection what it means to go against common sense when steering the politics of a country."
Meanwhile, the UK is becoming a "cautionary tale" about the effect of "bad politics", said an editorial in Indian daily newspaper The Hindu on Monday.
The newspaper - a widely-read English-language paper and generally critical of right-leaning political parties - said Ms Truss was "once seen as a new hope for breathing life back" into the UK Conservative Party.
Read: Pound rises against dollar as investors react to UK PM Truss' resignation
But now she may have added the "label of 'incompetence' to the Tory governance image", it adds.
Russia's media speculates over Ms Truss's future, reporting that she might be out of her post soon.
"Embarrassment for Liz", said the state-owned daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Monday.
"Yet another political crisis is looming over Britain: the newly minted prime minister, Liz Truss, may be forced out of her Downing Street residence already in the coming days and weeks," it says.
"The Tory leader's unpopularity in party circles and in British society has long been known, but now the [prime] minister has come close to the end of her scandalous career."
China's state media also heaped on further criticism. "The outside world does not seem optimistic about the turnaround of the Truss government," said state-run news agency China News Service on Friday.
The Global Times said Truss's position remained unstable because of "continued negative reviews".
But some online media, including Shenniao Zhixun, a blog run in south-west China, noted that the new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, nicknamed "son-in-law of China", had a Chinese wife and "a good attitude towards China".
For the Irish Independent, Truss bought herself some time by the change of chancellor.
But "once we start writing about a prime minister 'buying some time', or 'seeing off the immediate danger', they are nearing the end of their time," the opinion piece on Sunday adds.
Pound rises against dollar as investors react to UK PM Truss' resignation
The pound rose against the dollar and government borrowing costs dipped as investors reacted to Prime Minister Liz Truss's resignation.
Sterling jumped to $1.13 at one point before slipping back, but was still higher than at the start of Thursday, reported BBC.
One analyst said the reaction suggested investors were "relieved" by the news, despite a lot of uncertainty remaining.
Business groups said the new prime minister would have to act quickly to restore confidence.
Government borrowing costs rose sharply last month after the government promised huge tax cuts in its mini-budget without saying how it would pay for them.
But these costs fell back after the Bank of England stepped in with an emergency support programme, and after Jeremy Hunt reversed nearly all the mini-budget measures when he became chancellor.
Mr Hunt is due to announce plans for spending and tax on 31 October in his economic plan, which the Treasury confirmed was set to go ahead.
"Although the resignation of Liz Truss as Prime Minister leaves the UK without a leader when it faces huge economic, fiscal and financial market challenges, the markets appear to be relieved," said Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics.
He added that her resignation was "a step that needed to happen for the UK government to move further along the path towards restoring credibility in the eyes of the financial markets".
"But more needs to be done and the new prime minister and their chancellor have a big task to navigate the economy through the cost of living crisis, cost of borrowing crisis and the cost of credibility crisis."
Read: British pound hits record low against dollar
Simon French, chief economist at Panmure Gordon, said the market reaction had been "fairly muted", with investors waiting for the "detail of what comes next".
Ms Truss said her successor would be elected in a Tory leadership contest, to be completed in the next week. Her resignation came after a key minister quit and Tory MPs rebelled in a chaotic parliamentary vote on Wednesday.
Mr French said the markets could rally "more aggressively" if a clear favourite emerged for PM. "The sooner you get there the more likely the person who has won will have the support to do the difficult stuff."
The head of the CBI business lobby group, Tony Danker, said: "The politics of recent weeks have undermined the confidence of people, businesses, markets and global investors in Britain.
"Stability is key. The next prime minister will need to act to restore confidence from day one.
"They will need to deliver a credible fiscal plan for the medium term as soon as possible, and a plan for the long-term growth of our economy."
The interest rate - or yield - on UK government bonds for borrowing over a 10-year period climbed above 4% at one point on Thursday morning, but then fell back steadily as speculation grew about Ms Truss's possible departure.
Following the PM's statement, the rate edged higher again to about 3.8%, but still remained below the level seen at the start of the day.
Ahead of the PM's resignation, Bill Blain of Shard Capital had told the BBC that the markets had been "watching in a kind of stunned, open-mouthed horror" at political events.
"The problem we've got is that the last couple of weeks has really destroyed the image of political competency and that's one of the key elements to make any economy work," he said.
Can’t deliver the mandate on which I was elected: Truss
The prime minister has been speaking outside Downing Street to announce her resignation.
Having spent just 45 days in office, Liz Truss announced she is stepping down with a Conservative Party leadership election to take place within the next week, reports BBC.
Read:British PM Liz Truss resigns after 44 days in office
Here is her speech in full:
"I came into office at a time of great economic and international instability.
"Families and businesses were worried about how to pay their bills.
"Putin's illegal war in Ukraine threatens the security of our whole continent and our country has been held back for too long by low economic growth.
"I was elected by the Conservative Party with a mandate to change this.
"We delivered on energy bills and on cutting National Insurance.
"And we set out a vision for a low tax high growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit.
"I recognise, though, given the situation I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.
"I have therefore spoken to His Majesty The King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party.
"This morning, I met the chairman of the 1922 committee, Sir Graham Brady.
Read: UK PM Truss’ waning power brings political plots, jokes
"We've agreed there will be a leadership election to be completed within the next week.
"This will ensure that we remain on a path to deliver our fiscal plans and maintain our country's economic stability and national security.
"I will remain as prime minister until a successor has been chosen.
"Thank you."
British PM Liz Truss resigns after 44 days in office
British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned Thursday — bowing to the inevitable after a tumultuous six-week term in which her policies triggered turmoil in financial markets and a rebellion in her party obliterated her authority.
She said “I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected.”
Just a day earlier Truss had vowed to stay in power, saying she was “a fighter and not a quitter.” But Truss couldn't hold on any longer after a senior minister quit her government with a barrage of criticism and a vote in the House of Commons descended into chaos and acrimony just days after she was forced to abandon many of her economic policies.
Her departure leaves a divided Conservative Party seeking a leader who can unify its warring factions.
Read: UK PM Truss’ waning power brings political plots, jokes
A growing number of lawmakers had called for Truss to resign after weeks of turmoil sparked by her economic plan. The plan unveiled by the government last month triggered financial turmoil and a political crisis that has seen the replacement of Truss’ Treasury chief, multiple policy U-turns and a breakdown of discipline in the governing Conservative Party.
Earlier, Conservative lawmaker Simon Hoare said the government was in disarray.
“Nobody has a route plan. It’s all sort of hand-to-hand fighting on a day-to-day basis,” he told the BBC on Thursday. He said Truss had “about 12 hours” to turn the situation around.
Truss had held a hastily arranged meeting in her 10 Downing Street office with Graham Brady, a senior Conservative lawmaker who oversees leadership challenges. Brady was tasked with assessing whether the prime minister still has the support of Tory members of Parliament — and it seemed she did not.
A growing number of Conservative members of Parliament had called Thursday for her to step down and end the chaos.
“It’s time for the prime minister to go,” lawmaker Miriam Cates said. Another, Steve Double, said of Truss: “She isn’t up to the job, sadly." Legislator Ruth Edwards said “it is not responsible for the party to allow her to remain in power.”
Lawmakers' anger grew after a Wednesday evening vote over fracking for shale gas — a practice that Truss wants to resume despite opposition from many Conservatives — produced chaotic scenes in Parliament.
With Conservatives holding a large parliamentary majority, an opposition call for a fracking ban was easily defeated. But there were displays of anger in the House of Commons, with party whips accused of using heavy-handed tactics to gain votes.
Chris Bryant, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party, said he “saw members being physically manhandled ... and being bullied.” Conservative officials denied there was manhandling.
Rumors swirled that Conservative Chief Whip Wendy Morton, who is responsible for party discipline, and her deputy had resigned. Hours later, Truss’ office said both remained in their jobs.
Newspapers that usually support the Conservatives were vitriolic. An editorial in the Daily Mail was headlined: “The wheels have come off the Tory clown car.”
International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, sent onto the airwaves Thursday morning to defend the government, insisted the administration was providing “stability.” But she was unable to guarantee Truss would lead the party into the next election.
“At the moment, I think that’s the case," she said.
Read: In six weeks, UK leader Liz Truss goes from triumph to trouble
With opinion polls giving the Labour Party a large and growing lead, many Conservatives now believe their only hope of avoiding electoral oblivion is to replace Truss. But they were divided about how to get rid of her, and over who should replace her.
The party is keen to avoid another divisive leadership contest like the race a few months ago that saw Truss defeat ex-Treasury chief Rishi Sunak. Among potential replacements — if only Conservative lawmakers can agree — are Sunak, House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and newly appointed Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt.
A national election doesn't have to be held until 2024.
In a major blow, Home Secretary Suella Braverman resigned Wednesday after breaching rules by sending an official document from her personal email account. She used her resignation letter to lambaste Truss, saying she had “concerns about the direction of this government.”
“The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes,” she said in a thinly veiled dig at Truss.
Braverman was replaced as home secretary, the minister responsible for immigration and law and order, by former Cabinet minister Grant Shapps, a high-profile supporter of her defeated rival Sunak.
The dramatic developments came days after Truss fired her Treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday after the economic package the pair unveiled Sept. 23 spooked financial markets and triggered an economic and political crisis.
The plan’s 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in unfunded tax cuts sparked turmoil on financial markets, hammering the value of the pound and increasing the cost of U.K. government borrowing. The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent the crisis from spreading to the wider economy and putting pension funds at risk.
On Monday Kwarteng’s replacement, Hunt, scrapped almost all of Truss’ tax cuts, along with her flagship energy policy and her promise of no public spending cuts. He said the government will need to save billions of pounds and there are “many difficult decisions” to be made before he sets out a medium-term fiscal plan on Oct. 31.
Speaking to lawmakers for the first time since the U-turn, Truss apologized Wednesday and admitted she had made mistakes during her six weeks in office, but insisted that by changing course she had “taken responsibility and made the right decisions in the interest of the country’s economic stability.”
Opposition lawmakers shouted “Resign!” as she spoke in the House of Commons.
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer accused the Conservatives of lacking “the basic patriotic duty to keep the British people out of their own pathetic squabbles.”
He said that amid a worsening a cost-of-living crisis, “Britain cannot afford the chaos of the Conservatives anymore. We need a general election now.”
India stops journalist from flying to receive Pulitzer Prize
A Pulitzer Prize-winning Kashmiri photojournalist said Wednesday that Indian immigration authorities prevented her from flying to the United States to receive the award even though she had a valid visa and ticket.
Sanna Irshad Mattoo was scheduled to fly to New York on Monday to receive the Pulitzer Prize but was blocked by officials at New Delhi’s airport, she said.
Mattoo said she was stopped without reason and her ticket was canceled.
Mattoo was working on assignment for Reuters, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for coverage of the COVID-19 crisis in India.
She said she was traveling with two colleagues who were cleared to travel while she was stopped. Mattoo said the immigration official handed her boarding pass back but did not respond when she asked repeatedly what the problem was. She was then taken to the airline counter to collect her luggage.
Mattoo said she has no idea why she was prevented from traveling. “Is it about my work? Is it something else? I should be told. The problem is I don’t know what the problem is,” she said.
There was no immediate comment from Indian authorities.
It was the second such experience for Mattoo, who was stopped from traveling to Paris in July for a book launch and photography exhibition as one of 10 winners of the Serendipity Arles Grant 2020. Again, Mattoo said that immigrations officials gave her no reason but told her she would not be able to travel internationally.
She has been working since 2018 as a freelance photojournalist depicting life in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where insurgents have been fighting for the region’s independence or merger with neighboring Pakistan.
Journalists have long braved threats in the restive region as the Indian government seeks to tighten control over the media. Their situation has grown worse since India revoked the region’s semi-autonomy in 2019, with dozens arrested, interrogated and investigated under harsh anti-terror laws.