October 21, 2022

Liz Truss’ Reign Only Lasted 45 Days, But These Montages Will Last Forever

Goodbye, this is all a bit funny.

Arne Dedert/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

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On Thursday, Liz Truss announced that, after only serving 45 days, she will be stepping down as the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Truss made history as one of the shortest-serving world leaders. But during her time, she made the most of it, jampacking her tenure with controversies.

Of course, the Brits are dealing with it in the only way that they know how…jokes and dry sarcasm. And, I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty funny. 

The night of Truss’s departure, the BBC’s current affairs program, Newsnight played Rihanna’s break-up anthem “Take a Bow” over a nearly two-minute montage of Truss’s farewell speech and her few moments as prime minister. The production on this video is absolute gold. Especially the perfectly timed lyric “you look so dumb right now, standing outside my house” as Truss steps outside 10 Downing Street. 

Channel 4 News took a similar approach. But they opted to play Taylor Swift’s “Black Space,” which was one of Truss’s favorite songs. I will forever be jealous that I didn’t come up with it myself. 

Both videos have spread like wildfire across social media, with users calling the clips “truly a piece of artwork” and a “masterpiece of reportage.” While the United Kingdom’s political fate is currently up in the air, at least they made some great memes. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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