Liz Truss: South West Norfolk voters respond to election ousting

Psychotherapist Karys Matthams says she has only once spotted her former MP Liz Truss in the Norfolk town of Thetford.

“It was on a billboard,” the 47-year-old resident says. “She may as well have been wearing an invisibility cloak.”

Two years ago, for 49 days, Ms Truss was the nation’s prime minister. Today, she is no longer an MP after losing what was once considered a Tory stronghold to Labour.

The result has surprised Ms Matthams who thought Ms Truss would scrape through and hold her seat.

“I think it is really good news,” she says. “I think it is time that she went – I don’t see anything that she has done positive for the locality.”

When a political commentator joked that Ms Truss had “roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce” when she became PM and oversaw a ‘mini budget’ that spooked the financial markets, British newspaper the Daily Star responded by testing the theory on a live webcam feed.

Thousands watched “lettuce-cam” showing a 60p Tesco lettuce in a blonde wig next to a framed photo of the prime minister. And when Ms Truss announced her resignation, nearly 20,000 people tuned in to congratulate the lettuce on outlasting her.

The stunt, says Ms Matthams, was something that has lingered in the minds of Ms Truss’s former constituents.

“Anybody who doesn’t last as long as a lettuce is going to make an awfully big impression on people,” says Ms Mattham. “And the fact she wasn’t remotely sorry for the mistakes she made or the damage she caused, I think people will notice and remember that.”