Liz Truss lettuce

On 14 October 2022, British tabloid newspaper the Daily Star began a livestream of an iceberg lettuce next to a framed photograph of Liz Truss, who was appointed prime minister of the United Kingdom the previous month.

[1][2] Liz Truss became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 6 September 2022, following the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, replacing Boris Johnson.

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.

British media outlets lambasted Truss's performance and the ensuing political chaos, with many observers believing that her resignation would be imminent.

[9] The lettuce had been purchased from a Tesco store for £0.60 with an expected shelf-life of approximately ten days,[4] and was physically hosted in the home of Edward Keeble, one of the newspaper's video editors.

[7] 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.

[22] Labour Party MP Chris Bryant remarked during an appearance at Sky News that "the lettuce might as well be running the country",[23] a statement echoed by The Atlantic journalist Helen Lewis.

[36] Truss doubled down on these comments in an April 2024 interview with BBC journalist Chris Mason, calling it "pathetic point-scoring" and remarking that the lettuce phenomenon "is the kind of thing that obsesses what I describe as the London elite".

[37] On 13 August 2024, Truss left the 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.

choosing the contestant and MP Matt Hancock to be the camp leader, the series' presenters Ant & Dec introduced a lettuce called Spud, again asking which would last longer.

[40] During the January 2023 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives election, the Lincoln Project made a tweet referencing the Liz Truss lettuce to mock Kevin McCarthy, who had failed to secure enough votes to win the Speakership; he later won, but was removed in October of that year.

[41] During the 2024 Scottish government crisis, on 26 April, GB News presenters Tom Harwood and Emily Carver unveiled 'Humza Yousleaf' live on their show Good Afternoon Britain; the lettuce was decorated with a paper beard and googly eyes to resemble the then-Scottish First Minister.