On 5th September 2022 Truss won the Tory leadership on 47% of membership vote. She was elected as Tory leader and hence appointed as PM (on Tuesday 6th) beating Rishi Sunak by 57% to 43% of the 141,000 votes cast. The turn-out was 82% (it was largely an e-ballot) meaning the Tory membership was then 172,000. Its now thought to be under 150,000.
The 80,000 votes Truss got did not pass the 50% threshold of those entitled to vote which currently applies to trade union ballots. Truss got 47% of the vote on this basis and were it a union ballot it would have been declared invalid as the TUC noted.
As much to the point she had no mandate from the electorate for her policies. Six weeks later she was out of office and in short order replaced by Sunak the man she had beaten just a short period before.
Two years we can only look back in anger except of course for the five remaining Tory leadership candidates who have had nothing at all to say about it, despite four of them serving as Ministers under Truss.
The lettuce which outstayed Truss’s 49 days remains as a powerful image. So much so that when political pranksters Led By Donkeys unveiled an image of a lettuce as Truss was speaking in Beccles recently she stormed off stage exclaiming ‘that’s not funny’
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