On British social media, the Liz Truss era began with cheese and pork and ended with a rotting lettuce. The mockery scarcely paused in between.
One of Ms. Truss’s defining talents as a politician has been her willingness to embrace a provocative message and to provide visuals to match — even at the risk of looking foolish.
That helped her win the Conservative Party leadership, with outfits seemingly designed to evoke Margaret Thatcher and remarks that could have been calibrated to annoy cautious centrists. (Asked whether President Emmanuel Macron of France was a friend or foe, she replied: “The jury’s out.”)
It also, however, made her an exceptionally rich source of memes. A British political writer, Tom Hamilton, could run a Twitter “World Cup of Liz Truss Gifs” as long ago as 2017. The two finalists, both from a 2014 speech while she was Britain’s agriculture secretary, gained international circulation as she closed in on Downing Street. The runner-up was her emphatic reaction to the high proportion of its cheese Britain imported, and the winner was her suggestive description of a trade opportunity in China:
Her sometimes eccentric manner continued to provide viral clips, but perhaps the most galling indignity came from a more traditional British source: a tabloid. The Daily Star, picking up a glancing line in The Economist about the shelf life of Ms. Truss’s policies, put her head and a 70-cent head of iceberg on its front page, with the question: “Which wet lettuce will last longer?”
The lettuce has returned for at least three subsequent front pages, and also has a live webcam, on which it has acquired googly eyes and a wig, among other accessories.
In the end, her own members of Parliament appeared to join in the ridicule. Robert Langan, a Conservative lawmaker representing a chunk of the Peak District National Park, chose to highlight a column he had written for his local newspaper on dumpster fires: “Indeed, the act of extinguishing the flames could well be the end of the skip they originated in. But urgent action is necessary nevertheless.”
A parliamentary colleague endorsed the warning. By then, the blaze looked to be well out of Ms. Truss’s control.
