The Tabloids Have Challenged PM Liz Truss to Outlast a Lettuce

Iceberg, right ahead! Liz Truss’s efforts in her short time as prime minister have today, 14 October, resulted in her sacking-not-sacking of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.

But, more significantly, Truss appears on the cover of the Daily Star, the right-leaning tabloid, pitted against not another politician but an iceberg lettuce.

The rationale is this: the shop-bought salad vegetable has a shelf-life of 10 days; and that Truss’s premiership has been so rocky since taking the reins from that steady chap, her predecessor, that she faces the chop sooner rather than later. Just another normal day on normal island, then.

Truss has been in the job for just 38 days, during which time she and Kwarteng have been accused of doing untold damage to the British economy; with the mini-budget of three weeks ago, resulting not in growth, but soaring interest rates, chaos in the markets, open warfare in a Tory party far too at ease with such shenanigans, and now, sackings.

No, we will never, ever forget.

“Which wet lettuce will last longer?” asks the Daily Star’s front cover, urging its readers to “watch our lettuce cam” online. “Lettuce Cam” is real — a live stream of a framed portrait of Truss next to an iceberg lettuce with eyes on a table. “Can Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?”

“Will Liz Truss still be Prime Minister within the 10 day shelf-life of a lettuce?”

At the time of writing, more than 1,300 viewers are tuned into the live stream. At the time of writing, very little is happening. Not something that can be said of Downing Street, where Kwarteng’s replacement as chancellor, Jeremy Hunt (yes, he, friend of cold pizza, foe of student doctors) has already been announced.

Daily Star

As James Hansen put it: “well, if she gets stabbed in the back they can make a Caesar salad.”

The lettuce definitely has a chance, such are these choppy times.