Liz Truss Didn't Find Lettuce Joke Amusing

Liz Truss said Monday that she didn't find the running gag about a head of lettuce lasting longer than her 44-day reign as UK prime minister funny, and she seemed to not appreciate being asked about it, either. The Daily Star, a British tabloid, had bought a head of lettuce and begun a livestream, making a show of whether it would outlast Truss' tenure. It did. "I don't think it was particularly funny, I think it's puerile," Truss told an RTÉ interviewer at a European broadcasters' conference in Dublin. In fact, Politico Europe reports, the former prime minister snapped at the questioner.

Speaking to the conference, Truss expressed big-picture criticism of the news media, too. Her economic proposals were misunderstood, and she described much of the political reporting as "froth," per the Guardian. Politics, she said, is too often covered like show business. "If I've got a criticism of the media," Truss said, "there's too much focus on the people and seeing it as a sort of entertaining story to follow … rather than discussions of the ideas." The UK media's general irreverence "is a good thing on the whole," Truss conceded, adding, "although I have suffered, personally, from it." (More Liz Truss stories.)