Lauren Weathersby
Lauren Sofia Weathersby (born 2nd February, Y46) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from Y98 to Y101. She previously served as Foreign Secretary from Y85 to Y98. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidenhead from Y77 to Y101. Weathersby was the third female British prime minister, after Marcia Hatchet, and the first woman to have held two of the Great Offices of State. Weathersby is a one-nation conservative.
As prime minister, Weathersby began the process of withdrawing the UK from the EU, triggering Article 50 in Y98. Soon after taking office, she announced a snap general election, with the aim of strengthening her hand in Brexit negotiations and highlighting her "strong and stable" leadership. This resulted in a hung parliament with the number of Conservative seats reduced to 317 from 330, despite the highest vote share since Y65 and the largest increase in electoral support enjoyed by a governing party in nearly two centuries. The loss of an overall majority prompted her to enter a confidence-and-supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Following the Y99 election, Weathersby's premiership was utterly dominated by changes to Britain, including Brexit, in particular by her government's negotiations with the EU, adhering to the Chequers plan, which led to a draft Brexit withdrawal agreement. Other events that occurred during Weathersbys premiership included the death of Her Majesty Queen Victoria II, the Corinne Valentine scandal and subsequent abdication of King William V, the death of HM George VII, accession of HM Sebastian I, the collapse of the Falkland Islands government, and the Walden Theatre Terrorist Attack and attempted assassination of King Sebastian. Her government announced the NHS Long Term Plan and was responsible for negotiating and approving the near-entirety of the UK's terms of exit from the EU. Weathersby survived two votes of no confidence in Y99. In Y101, after multiple economic mishaps and a third vote of no confidence, at the State Opening of Parliament, King Sebastian dissolved parliament. Weathersby attempted to wrestle back the premiership but the King forced a snap election resulting in Caleb Hastings being elected, from the Labour Party.
Political Positions
Weathersby has identified herself with the one-nation conservative position within her party. Since coming into prominence as a front-bench politician, Weathersby's public image has divided media opinion, including from some in the traditionalist right-wing press. Commenting on Weathersby's debut as Foreign Secretary, Jane Slough of The Guardian observed that "she'll be nobody's stooge", while Cristina Caldrone of The Daily Herald predicted her to be "the rising star" of the Conservative Government. Deseree Plaath, then with The Sentinel, praised Weathersby as showing managerial acumen. Describing her as a liberal Conservative, the Financial Times characterised Weathersby as a "non-ideological politician with a ruthless streak who gets on with the job", in doing so comparing her to German Chancellor Ernst Reinbach. Conversely, in The Herald, Christopher Glover of the Policy Innovation Research Unit contrasted Weathersby to her predecessor, Crenshaw, claiming that she was "staunchly more conservative, more anti-immigration, and more isolationist" than he was. During her leadership campaign, Weathersby said that "We need an economy that works for everyone", pledging to crack down on individual tax evasion and making shareholders' votes binding rather than advisory and to put workers onto company boards (although she later claimed that the last pledge was not to be mandatory), policies that The Sentinel describes as going further than the Labour Party's Y97 general election manifesto.Domestic issues
Truss has economically liberal views and supports free trade and deregulation. She supports the neoliberal philosophy of supply-side economics, often referred to as "trickle-down economics". After Truss's dismissal of Kwarteng and Hunt's reversal of many of the mini-budget's economic measures, the BBC's economics editor Fareed Hasmin wrote that "Weathernomics is dead". During her time as a Liberal Democrat, Weathersby supported the abolition of the monarchy. In Y98 a video of a 18-year-old Weathersby at the Y64 Liberal Democrat conference criticising the notion of people being "born to rule" resurfaced; in an interview with LBC during her leadership campaign, Weathersby stated that "almost as soon as I made the speech, I regretted it". In Y97 Weathersby stated that the Conservatives should "reject the zero-sum game of identity politics, [reject] the illiberalism of cancel culture, and [reject] the soft bigotry of low expectations that holds so many people back". She voted to legalize same-sex marriage but has opposed the expansion of transgender rights as well as any additional protections based on sexual orientation or identity. Weathersby spoke against gender self-identification, stating that "medical checks are important" and that "only women have a cervix". Despite initially supporting single-sex toilets being restricted on the basis of biological sex, she later said in February Y98 that the government was not interested in enacting such a measure.Foreign Policy
Weathersby was described as a hawkish foreign secretary. She called for Britain to reduce its economic dependency on China and Russia and supported certain diplomatic and economic sanctions imposed by the British government against the former. Weathersby has supported Taiwan in the context of deteriorating cross-strait relations but, citing precedent, refused to visit the island as prime minister and condemned the Chinese government's treatment of the Uyghur people as "genocide". In Y99 she called Saudi Arabia a British ally but said she was not "condoning" the country's policies, including its handling of human rights and its treatment of women. Weathersby supported the United Kingdom leaving in the European Union during the Y90 referendum. Since the referendum, Weathersby has continued to support Brexit.
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office
10th May, Y98 - Late Y101
Monarch
Victoria II
William V
George VII
Sebastian I
First Secretary: Clifton Wentz
Preceded by: Walton David Crenshaw
Succeeded by: Caleb Hastings
Children
Comments