10/23/22

By Aditi Jha

On Thursday, Liz Truss resigned as the Prime Minister of England after a disastrous six weeks in office. The main reason why Liz Truss' 45 days in office made a big mess was mostly because of bad policies. She firstly decided on an awful economic plan- namely, huge tax cuts (the biggest in 50 years) that would supposedly be funded through the government borrowing lots of money. It caused lots of inflation, anyway, and now the pound's value ($1.14) has been the lowest it's ever been since 1985. England currently has a record-breaking account deficit. That happens when a country spends or invests far more money on foreign goods and services than it makes at home. Just three days after this tax plan was announced, it was scrapped. And after claims of bullying in Parliament and the firing of a finance minister, Truss resigned on the 20th. There was speculation that the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, would be a possibility to go back into office despite having resigned due to a series of scandals. However, he has declined to run for Prime Minister, saying that it would "simply not be the right thing to do" because "you can't govern effectively unless you have a united party in Parliament." There are 357 members in UK's Parliament. Each candidate for Prime Minister has to get at least a hundred votes, so there's a maximum of three candidates per election. Britain's former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak has entered the race leading the Conservative Party, his second try at the position after he lost to Liz Truss. Sunak has the required 100 nominations from members of Parliament. He will be against the Leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, who was third for the position of Prime Minister following Sunak and Truss after the resignation of Johnson. Sunak said this morning that the UK is facing a "profound economic crisis." He tweeted that "I want to fix our economy, unite our Party and deliver for our country." The main opposition of the Conservative Party is the Labor Party. The leader, Keir Starmer, said that there should be a general election. "Let the public in to decide... do they want to continue with this utter chaos, or do they want stability under a Labor government?" he said in an interview with BBC.

Former President Trump has been subpoenaed by the January 6th committee. Representative Bennie Thompson, the panel's chair, and the vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney said in a letter to Trump that "we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power." He must provide requested documents by November 4th and testimony on or around November 14th.

That's the news for today! Stay safe!