Is Prime Minister Liz Truss still in charge of U.K. government?

Truss left it to House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, another rival, to defend the government’s U-turns in Parliament, where both opposition lawmakers and some mutinous politicians from the ruling Conservative Party are calling on the prime minister to quit after just six weeks in office. It was another disastrous day for Truss.

The first the public heard from her was in a late night BBC broadcast. She said she wanted to “say sorry for the mistakes that have been made” but added that she was “sticking around,” and would “lead the Conservatives into the next general election.”

Liz Truss fires finance minister while reversing policies that sank British pound

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer pushed the refrain that Truss was “in office but not in power.”

“Where is the prime minister?” Starmer asked rhetorically. “Hiding away, dodging questions, scared of her own shadow.”

Some commentators are speaking about when she goes, not if. One British tabloid is live-streaming a head of iceberg lettuce placed next to a picture of Truss and asking which will last longer.

An editorial in the Sunday Times declared: “Truss has wrecked the Conservative Party’s reputation for fiscal competence and humiliated Britain on the international stage.”

“Senior Tories must now act in the national interest and remove her from Downing Street as quickly as possible,” the editorial continued, while also calling Hunt the “de factor prime minister.”

Hunt is a moderate Conservative who is considered to be a safe pair of hands, though he has twice lost contests to lead his party. He assured the country that Truss was “in charge.”

“It is the most challenging form of leadership to accept the decision you have made has to be changed,” he told Parliament. “And the prime minister has done that, and she has done so willing because she understands the importance of economic stability, and I respect her for it.”

Why is Britain comparing its prime minister to a lettuce?

Truss was installed at Downing Street as the choice of 160,000 dues-paying members of the Conservative Party — about 0.3 percent of the population. The growth-through-tax-cuts plan that helped propel her candidacy, and prompted admiring comparisons to Margaret Thatcher, has now been thoroughly gutted.

Tax cuts for the wealthy didn’t go down well with a public that is facing record inflation and soaring bills. But the government’s about-face had far more to do with bond traders, who were spooked by the level of borrowing the plan would require.

Hunt came in after two of the most controversial parts of the plan had already been scrapped. And still he pumped the brakes hard,…