Liz Truss’s downfall sparks talk of democracy’s decline in UK

Questions of democratic legitimacy are swirling in the United Kingdom after the resignation on Thursday of Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose government collapsed just 44 days after she took office.

Truss’s downfall will trigger a second leadership election within the Conservative Party’s 170,000 members to pick a third prime minister for the country of 67 million this year.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, another conservative, resigned in July following revelations that he’d disobeyed the UK’s Covid-19 regulations while the country was on lockdown.