The revolving door of national politics once again transfixed Britain when Prime Minister Liz Truss’s announced her resignation on Thursday, making her the second leader to depart in just a few weeks. The announcement came just over a month after the country gained a new monarch, King Charles III, underscoring the instability at the heart of the government and a sense of flux for Britons.
When the king’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died in September, there was an outpouring of grief nationwide, as well as international sympathy, in part because after 70 years on the throne, she had represented, for many people, stability in a changing world. Her funeral a month ago was an opportunity for Britain to put its state power, rooted in hundreds of years of history, on display.
During the queen’s reign, she saw 15 prime ministers take power, each one arriving at Buckingham Palace to bow or curtsy and be sworn in. The photographs of Ms. Truss meeting the queen at Balmoral Castle in Scotland were the final ones of the monarch to be released.
King Charles has yet to swear in a prime minister, and he will not be crowned until next May, making the task of projecting stability more difficult.
Ms. Truss informed the king on Thursday that she would resign, before addressing television cameras outside Downing Street. The two met last week, when a chance phrase uttered by the monarch and captured on video seemed, to many viewers, to put a finger on the new prime minister’s difficulties.
“Your Majesty,” Ms. Truss said, curtsying. “Lovely to see you again.”
“Back again,” the king said, ushering her into an ornate room for the prime minister’s audience with the monarch. “Dear, oh dear. Anyway.”
Another defining feature of the queen’s reign was her decision to avoid making pronouncements about political issues. Commentators said that her silence, an apparent product of rigorous self-discipline, allowed her to float more easily above the political fray.
By contrast, during the king’s long years as heir to the throne, he established a track record of issuing opinions on contemporary issues. As Prince of Wales, he spoke out against air pollution, industrial agriculture and deforestation, and increasingly called for global action on climate change.
“The eyes and hopes of the world are upon you to act with all dispatch, and decisively, because time has run out,” he told world leaders at international climate talks in Glasgow in November.
During a visit to Barbados last year, when the country removed the British monarch as its official head of state, he referred to the “appalling atrocity of slavery.”
The remarks divided opinion and, on the issue of the environment, brought an accusation of hypocrisy, given that he traveled by private jet. Last month, he said that he would stifle himself, embracing the mantle of stoicism and relative silence that had served his predecessor.
Source : Nytimes
