As you know, British Prime Minister Liz Truss has resigned, ending her time at the wheel of a slow-motion political car crash that she seemed as befuddled to witness as the rest of us.
Truss will go down in history as a pub quiz question: who was the United Kingdom’s shortest-serving PM? However, her brief term in office may be more popularly remembered in simpler terms: She couldn’t outlast a head of lettuce.
A lettuce livestream was created by The Daily Star, a tabloid newspaper, which was in turn inspired by The Economist writing last week that, after sacking her Chancellor, Truss only managed to hold onto any real power as PM for about a week, which is “roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.”
The stream has been running since last Friday (14 October), and shows the head of lettuce sitting on a table next to a clock and two miniature Union Jacks. The accompanying video description sums up the experiment by asking the question, “Will Liz Truss still be Prime Minister within the 10-day shelf-life of a lettuce?”
Over the past week, the lettuce wore googly eyes and a wig, rested with a sleep mask over its green face, and was served coffee and sausage rolls for breakfast. Now, still triumphantly edible following Truss’ resignation, it’s been served drinks, celebrating the fact that a humble head of lettuce has endured where Britain’s Conservative Party has faltered.
Now that the vegetable has served its main purpose, it may also, unlike the PM who led to its celebrity status, be of some use to the country by being placed in a sandwich or used to make a salad that provides actual nourishment.