The Liz Truss Lettuce was a 2022 media stunt featuring a livestream of an iceberg lettuce to satirize the brief tenure of British Prime Minister Liz Truss, symbolically competing with her to see which would “last” longer. The lettuce was declared “victorious” when Truss resigned after just 45 days.
The prank started on October 14th when British tabloid newspaper the ‘Daily Star’ began a livestream of an iceberg lettuce next to a framed photograph of Truss, who was appointed prime minister the previous month. This act followed an opinion piece in ‘The Economist’ that compared the expected brevity of her premiership to the shelf life of a head of lettuce. With the October 2022 United Kingdom government crisis occurring weeks into her tenure, many political commentators opined that Truss’s resignation was imminent. She announced her resignation on October 20th, before the lettuce had wilted.
Liz Truss became UK Prime Minister on September 6, 2022, replacing Boris Johnson. The September 2022 United Kingdom mini-budget was published on September 23rd by Kwasi Kwarteng, then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, which included tax cuts without matching spending cuts. The mini-budget triggered a heavily negative market reaction, with the exchange rate of the pound sterling collapsing and pension funds coming close to bankruptcy.
After just over a month in office, Kwarteng was removed and Truss reversed most of the economic policies within the mini-budget. British media outlets lambasted Truss’s performance and the ensuing political chaos. A column in ‘The Economist’ titled ‘Liz Truss has made Britain a riskier bet for bond investors’ stated that, after deducting the ten-day mourning period following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Truss had caused economic and political turmoil after just seven days in power, comparing that duration to the ‘shelf-life of a lettuce.’ The publication further dubbed her the ‘Iceberg Lady,’ in contrast with the ‘Iron Lady,’ a nickname for the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, a political idol of Truss’s. The lettuce comparison was made by The Economist executive editor Andrew Palmer.
Denis Mann, a deputy editor of the British entertainment-focused tabloid newspaper the ‘Daily Star,’ read the column and mentioned it to Jon Clark, the newspaper’s chief editor, who saw potential in the idea. They hosted a livestream with the title ‘LIVE: Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?’ on YouTube. The outlet had been known to make light of contemporary political events, such as Brexit, while generally not adopting a particular political stance. The lettuce had been purchased from a Tesco store for £0.60 with an expected shelf-life of approximately ten days, and was physically hosted in the home of Edward Keeble, one of the newspaper’s video editors. Within the first five hours of the stream, it had received more than 50,000 likes.
As the livestream continued, a pair of googly eyes and a blonde wig were put on the lettuce, followed by fake feet and hands and glasses. Occasionally, other items were placed near the lettuce such as stuffed toys, food items, and a mug labelled ‘Keep Calm and Carry On.’
As predicted, Truss announced her resignation as prime minister becoming, after only 45 days, the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. At that moment, there were 12,000 viewers on the livestream, which soon shot up to 21,000. The British national anthem ‘God Save the King’ began to play, the portrait of Truss on the table was flipped face down, and a plastic golden crown was placed on top of the lettuce, with the Daily Star declaring the lettuce’s ‘victory’ over Truss.
The music was later changed to ‘Celebration’ by American band Kool & the Gang, with a Greggs sausage roll and a glass of prosecco also featured. While the lettuce had not rotted entirely, it did show signs of discoloration, with a column in ‘The Atlantic’ commenting that it was still usable in a salad.
In Truss’s successor Rishi Sunak’s first Prime Minister’s Questions, then Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer stated that Sunak lost the first leadership contest to Truss, who herself was ‘beaten by a lettuce.’
In 2023, Truss broke her silence and spoke about the lettuce for the first time during a visit to Northern Ireland. In an interview with RTÉ journalist David McCullagh, she said: ‘I don’t think it’s funny, I just think it’s puerile.’ In 2024, Truss stormed off stage while promoting her memoirs in Beccles, Suffolk, after the campaign group Led by Donkeys unfurled a remote control banner as she was taking questions from the audience. The banner pictured a lettuce along with the words ‘I crashed the economy.’ Truss described the stunt as ‘not funny.’
The Daily Omnivore 
Leave a comment