Victor Ezeja
A former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Liz Truss, has lost her South West Norfolk seat to Labour Party in the Thursday’s general election.
According to result seen by Prime Business Africa, Truss was trounced by Terry Jermy of Labour Party who scored 27 per cent of the total votes. Truss came second in the poll with 25 per cent of the total votes.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelAnalysts consider the outcome as the climax of Conservative Party’s losses in the House of Commons’ 2024 general election.
Truss spent only 49 days in office as Prime Minister in 2022 and resigned when she could not deliver on what the party had promised.
Prior to that, she had served as foreign secretary in Boris Johnson’s government.
She represented South West Norfolk in the parliament for 14 years.
In an interview with BBC, Truss said the issue the Conservatives had was that they could not sufficiently deliver on the policies people want.
Many members reportedly blamed her for the fate of the party in the Thursday’s election. According to them, the outcome of what happened during her tenure as PM made the Conservatives to lose reputation in the country.
“During our 14 years in power, unfortunately, we did not do enough to take on the legacy,” Truss told the BBC on what could be responsible for her party’s massive defeat in the election.
“We’ve been left in particular things like the Human Rights Act that made it very difficult for us to deport illegal immigrants and that is one of the reasons I think we’ve ended up in a situation we are now,” she added.
Apart from her seat, the Tory also lost the seats of three other former Prime Ministers who preceded Rishi Sunak. They include Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge won by Labour, Theresa May’s former seat of Maidenhead won by the Liberal Democrats and David Cameron’s former seat of Witney also clinched by Lib Dem.
Truss’ own loss as a former PM was considered an embarrassing defeat for the Tory.
Prime Business Africa reports that Labour recorded a landslide victory, snatching the PM leadership from the Tory.
Sunak, who won his seat, has offered his resignation as PM which was a accepted by King Charles during a visit to the Buckingham palace on Friday morning.
In all, Labour won 412 seats so far while the Conservative secured 121 seats. When compared with the 2019 election, Labour has gained additional 211 seats while the Tory lost 251 votes.
The Conservatives are now getting set to play the role of opposition party in the UK government led Labour’s Keir Starmer.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with seven years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Master's degree in Mass Communication.
