She set the financial markets on fire and reduced her political ambitions to ashes… The ephemeral British Prime Minister Liz Truss will see her effigy burned this Friday during the traditional night of the bonfire in Edenbridge, a small town in the south of England . The former head of the Conservative government, who left last month after just 49 days in power, has the – rarely enviable – privilege of having been chosen celebrity of the year by the Edenbridge Bonfire Society.
His giant effigy, ten meters high, lends him a frightened face. The cardboard she has in her arms bears the symbols of her lightning mandate: her mini-budget, at the origin of a fiasco on the markets, a Guinness book of records to symbolize hers – unpopularity, brevity of her passage in Downing Street – but also the annual 115,000 pounds sterling (134,000 euros) that she will receive as former head of government.
Beaten by a lettuce and a cat
On her shoulder, the laughing lettuce that managed to outlast her. At his feet, Larry, the famous cat, mascot for more than ten years, who remains in Downing Street. The night of the “Bonfire” marks each year the failure of a conspiracy by English Catholics led by Guy Fawkes to kill the Protestant King James I and blow up Parliament on November 5, 1605.
It is celebrated on that day or the weekend close to that date, with bonfires into which effigies of Guy Fawkes are thrown, and fireworks. Edenbridge has distinguished itself for more than twenty years by burning the effigies of personalities who make the news. In 2018, it was Boris Johnson. Before him, there was Harvey Weinstein (2017), a powerful American film producer accused of harassment and rape, US President Donald Trump (2016) and the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (2003) and the following year , former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.