Biden responds to U.K. prime minister's resignation

President Joe Biden issued a statement Thursday thanking U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss for “her partnership on a range of issues” in response to the Conservative leader’s resignation after just six weeks in office.

“The United States and the United Kingdom are strong Allies and enduring friends — and that fact will never change,” Biden said in a statement. “I thank Prime Minister Liz Truss for her partnership on a range of issues including holding Russia accountable for its war against Ukraine.”

Truss’ resignation on Thursday came after a chaotic beginning to her tenure as prime minister, with a tax-cutting agenda that triggered financial market turmoil and a number of U-turns on policy issues that had her own members of Parliament turning on her. She announced her resignation in a televised statement outside 10 Downing Street, saying she could no longer deliver “the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.” The move will make her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.

Biden has been critical of Truss’ unfunded tax cuts — which caused markets to recoil and borrowing costs to spike. The president said on Saturday that Truss’ tax-cutting agenda was a “mistake” and that it was “predictable” that the prime minister would have to scale back her plan, which was widely criticized by other world leaders, as well as the International Monetary Fund.

“I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake,” Biden said at a campaign stop in Oregon on Saturday. “I think that the idea of cutting taxes on the super-wealthy at a time when … I disagree with the policy, but that’s up to Great Britain.”

Truss fired her close friend and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng last week following the market turmoil and replaced him with a center-ground choice, Jeremy Hunt. The new chancellor essentially tore up the remainder of Truss’ budget in an effort to calm the markets, but it wasn’t enough to save the prime minister from Conservative demands that she leave office.

Truss said during her resignation speech that a rapid-fire Conservative leadership election would take place over the next week to choose her successor.

“We will continue our close cooperation with the U.K. government as we work together to meet the global challenges our nations face,” Biden said in the statement Thursday.