The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party and also known colloquially as the Tories, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Labour Party. It is the current governing party, having won the 2019 general election, and has been the primary governing party in the United Kingdom since 2010. The party is on the centre-right of the political spectrum, and encompasses various ideological factions including one-nation conservatives, Thatcherites, and traditionalist conservatives. The party currently has 354 Members of Parliament, 260 members of the House of Lords, 9 members of the London Assembly, 31 members of the Scottish Parliament, 16 members of the Welsh Parliament, 4 directly elected mayors, 30 police and crime commissioners, and around 5,647 local councillors. It holds the annual Conservative Party Conference.
The Great Offices of State are senior offices in the UK government. They are the prime minister, chancellor of the Exchequer, foreign secretary and home secretary or, alternatively, three of those offices excluding the prime minister.
Sir Thomas Whinfield Scholar is a British civil servant who served as Permanent Secretary to the Treasury until 8 September 2022.
Mary Elizabeth Truss is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from September to October 2022. On her fiftieth day in office, she stepped down amid a government crisis, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom. Truss previously held various Cabinet positions under prime ministers David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, lastly as foreign secretary from 2021 to 2022. She became Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk in 2010.
Jacqueline Doyle-Price is a British Conservative Party politician and former civil servant. She was first elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Thurrock in the 2010 general election.
Akwasi Addo Alfred Kwarteng is a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 6 September to 14 October 2022 under Prime Minister Liz Truss and as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2021 to 2022 under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Spelthorne since 2010. Kwarteng is a member of the Conservative Party.
Joyce Rebekah "Joy" Morrissey is an American-born British politician who has served as the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire since 2019. Morrissey achieved ministerial rank as an Assistant Government Whip and has served in that role since July 2022 under three Prime Ministers.
Suzanne Webb is a British Conservative Party politician. She has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Stourbridge since the 2019 general election. She was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Prime Minister Liz Truss from September to October 2022.
The July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election was triggered by Boris Johnson's announcement on 7 July 2022 that he would resign as Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, after a series of political controversies.
Hugh O'Leary is a British accountant. He is the husband of Liz Truss, who was prime minister of the United Kingdom from September to October 2022.
John Kenneth Truss is a mathematician and emeritus professor of pure mathematics at the University of Leeds where he specialises in mathematical logic, infinite permutation groups, homogeneous structures and model theory. Truss began his career as a junior research fellow at the University of Oxford before holding a series of academic positions and lastly joining the University of Leeds. He has written books on discrete mathematics (1991) and mathematical analysis (1997) and was co-editor in chief of the Journal of the London Mathematical Society until June 2003. He is the father of the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Liz Truss.
The Truss ministry began on 6 September 2022 when Liz Truss was invited by Queen Elizabeth II—two days before the monarch's death—to succeed Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 6 September 2022. Johnson resigned as leader of the Conservative Party the previous day after Truss was elected as his successor. The Truss ministry was formed from the 2019 Parliament of the United Kingdom, as a Conservative majority government.
Liz Truss's tenure as prime minister of the United Kingdom began on 6 September 2022 when she accepted an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, succeeding Boris Johnson, and ended 49 days later on 25 October upon her resignation. While prime minister, Truss also served as first lord of the treasury, minister for the civil service, and Minister for the Union.
On 23 September 2022, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, delivered a Ministerial Statement entitled "The Growth Plan" to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. Widely referred to in the media as a mini-budget, it contained a set of economic policies and tax cuts such as bringing forward the planned cut in the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19%; the abolition of the 45% higher rate of income tax in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; reversing a plan announced in March 2021 to increase corporation tax from 19% to 25% from April 2023; the reversal of the April 2022 increase in National Insurance; and the abolition of the proposed Health and Social Care Levy. Following widespread negative response to the mini-budget, the planned abolition of the 45% tax rate was reversed 10 days later, while plans to cancel an increase in corporation tax were reversed 21 days later.
The October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election was triggered by Liz Truss's announcement that she would resign as Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, amid an economic and political crisis.
In September and October 2022, the Conservative Party government led by newly appointed prime minister Liz Truss faced a credibility crisis. It was caused by the September 2022 mini-budget and a disorganised vote in the House of Commons over a parliamentary vote to ban fracking, ultimately resulting in the loss of support of Conservative members of parliament (MPs).
On 14 October 2022, the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Star began a livestream of an iceberg lettuce next to a framed photograph of Liz Truss, then recently appointed prime minister of the United Kingdom. This followed an opinion piece in The Economist that compared the expected brevity of Truss's premiership to the shelf life of a lettuce, with the October 2022 United Kingdom government crisis occurring just weeks into her tenure and leading many political commentators to opine that Truss's resignation would be imminent. She announced her resignation as prime minister on 20 October 2022, before the lettuce had wilted; the Daily Star subsequently declared the lettuce "victorious" over Truss.
Out of the Blue: The Inside Story of the Unexpected Rise and Rapid Fall of Liz Truss is a non-fiction book about British politician Liz Truss, written by Harry Cole and James Heale, published as an ebook on 1 November 2022 and in print and audio on 24 November.
