Lucky for y’all, the first topic of that I have chosen to blog is politics. I myself received a Master’s in Political Science from the Florida State University (impressive, I know) so you are without a doubt getting some A1 content right off the bat. Only, for this story we have to jog our way across the pond… For a battle of the ages between a newly appointed Prime Minister and a head of lettuce.

British Parliament

Now I will admit, in the master’s program they didn’t teach us too much about the British Parliament and whatever process they have going on over there. But I do know google, and I know enough of the verbiage involving their process over there so here’s what I can say:

• The government is structured as a Constitutional Monarchy, which seems odd since the royal family makes no political decisions. Meanwhile, the royal family’s fortune, “The Firm” is worth $28 billion, or the price of approximately 16 million heads of iceberg lettuce.
• There are two “Houses” of the Parliament, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The House of Commons are the elected officials who actually are going through the process of lawmaking and budget forming while the House of Lords is mostly there for political support.
• The ever-sage Clark Griswold once said, “Look kids! Big Ben, Parliament!” And no, not the retired pump fake artist, but the famous clock tower that sits right next to the parliament building so affectionately named Big Ben. This clocktower stands at a whopping 315 feet tall, or approximately 378 heads of iceberg lettuce stacked on each other.
• The Prime Minister serves as the main head of the British Parliament and the Cabinet controls much of the legislative process. This is the position of interest for us in this blog.

Recent Prime Ministers

Recently there has been a lot of controversy and turnover at the Prime Minister (PM) position. They have one thing in common though in that they are members of the Conservative Party which has held that position and power in parliament as of late. We all recognize ole BJ (Boris Johnson) who did his best Trump impression with his time in office. He became a bit of a partier with a penchant for getting a little too blasted and was accused of well, groping… There goes the neighborhood.

Unlike Rob Ford, who knows that a true alpha never surrenders in the face of adversity, BJ resigned from his post amidst growing pressure from his off the field antics and economic turmoil caused by his policies. This made the way for a new PM who you probably had never heard of before but whose name will undoubtably go down in history: Liz Truss. But first, let’s meet her challenger.

The Berg

You know what I’m talking about. Not the ice cube that took down the Titanic, not the proposed man-made mountain in Germany, and no not even that big bald man that won over 90’s-2000’s wrestling fans by jackhammering all of his opponents no matter what size. No way, Jose.

We are talking about the mean, green, limousine ridin’, burger stylin’, low calorie, wheelin’ n’ dealin’ son of a gun: iceberg lettuce.

We all know it. Wrapped in that plastic wrap that you can never quite seal back up to make it airtight. Crispy and wet it’s a staple in the burger topping bar and chopped up in the salad bar. “But romaine is better,” you might say and to that, I’d call your point, but raise you one better. The #1 salad of all salads is literally made with a section of iceberg lettuce. Get out of here caesar salads, hey greek salad how about you go pound some sand, because we’re a wedge salad blog. I will admit that the original wedge salad with blue cheese crumbles and blue cheese dressing is a bit much for me. So I like to replace the dressing with ranch to create the *perfect* wedge salad (trust me). But it isn’t the superior leaf solely because of that:

• Iceberg is a 5/5 on crisp and a 1/5 on both flavor and bitterness. Making it the perfect refreshing addition to a salad if you want the other toppings to really shine through.
• It is the #1 produced lettuce in America in terms of volume. In California they plant 80,000 acres of the stuff which yields 1.6 million tons of iceberg lettuce every year. The price of that $1.6 million tons of iceberg lettuce would come out to $3.5 billion or 1/8 of the Royal Family’s fortune.
• You don’t see college kids wolfing down romaine stalks or fistfuls of arugula, but there is a growing phenomenon that started at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics called the lettuce club where, quite literally, a group of students race to see who can eat an entire head of lettuce first. Leave it to the math kids to show us how to really party.

It cannot be stated how popular, refreshing, and versatile this vegetable is. It’s cabbage’s cool older cousin, and it cannot be phased by the likes of other phony leafy greens (I’m talkin’ to you, chard). Not to mention, it will keep in your fridge for a pretty long time, which brings us back to the crux of this blog.

Liz Truss vs Lettuce

Remember? Remember that name from earlier? Yeah, that name, Liz Truss. To keep it brief, let’s call her Lizzie. Now, Lizzie took over as British PM after BJ bowed out from public pressure. As soon as Lizzie came into the office there was public resistance because she was still very much a voice of the Conservative party in Britain, which lately has been doing their best GOP.

Not to get too serious, but it has been fascinating to see Brexit from my safety of the good ole US of A (shoutout secession amirite?) and watch as this conservative wave has sort of washed over both of our countries in similar times and with similar characters. Nationalism and border crisis arguments that were so reticent to our political life here, I could see a bit of a parallel happening over there. The tensions have been growing from this since BJ’s term and definitely spilled over into Lizzie’s lap. From the start of her tenure on September 5th, 2022, it was clear that there was a long storm to weather…

Enter lettuce.

The Daily Star, a UK based news outlet, started a live stream of a head of iceberg lettuce on October 14th to answer what we all want to know: Which will last longer? Lizzie or the Lettuce? Well, within days Lizzie decided to make the lettuce’s job easier by releasing a budget that included steep tax cuts for the rich, hoping some good ole fashioned Reaganomics trickle down and borrowing would help to spread the load. On October 20th, after only 45 days, Lizzie was out. A marriage ending so quick it even had Kris Humphries impressed, the lettuce outlasted Lizzie’s reign.

Other Notable Challengers

Here are some more things that lasted longer than Liz Truss’s stint as PM:

• “Yeah!” by Usher ft. Lil John and Ludacris was a #1 single on Billboard for 76 days in 2004.
• Tiger Woods was the #1 golfer in the world for 281 straight weeks (1,967 days) from June 12, 2005, to October 30, 2010.
• The Mark Sanchez infamous butt-fumble was #1 on SportsCenter’s Not Top 10 for 40 consecutive weeks (280 days) and had to be retired by ESPN because it dominated the polls week in and week out (#StopTheCount).
• Matthew McConnaughay’s character in Interstellar spent mere hours on a planet after his ship was hit by a tidal wave, but because of gravity he actually spent 23 earth years there (8,395 days).
• A Canadian football fan vowed to wear shorts every day until his beloved Winnepeg Blue Bombers won the Grey Cup again starting in 2001. He proceeded to wear shorts every day for the next 18 years (6,750 days).
• Did I mention the Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian marriage made it 72 days?

While Lizzie has earned the prestige of the shortest-lived tenure for a British Prime Minister, she still lasted longer than a couple of things:

• Anthony Scaramucci (THE MOOOOOCH) only lasted 10 days as Trump’s communications director in 2017.
• Hall of Fame NFL coach Bill Belichick couldn’t stomach what it meant to be the head coach of the New York Jets and resigned after just 1 day. (2 Jets references in the first blog? This thing is already off the rails.)
• William Henry Harrison only made it 31 days into his term as POTUS.
• Brittney Spears and Jason Alexander were married for only 2 days and some change.
• But the real kicker was Heil Honey, I’m Home! a sitcom that was introduced in 1990 about if Adolf Hitler and his wife lived next door to a Jewish couple. Not surprisingly, this show only had 1 episode.

So, I guess she can’t chalk up that run to a total loss after all right? She beat out the best NFL coach of all time and a sitcom about the most famous genocide-er of our time. That has to count for something, right?

And now, up next for Great Britain, Rishi Sunak is taking over PM in Lizzie’s wake. Rishi is the first Prime Minister of British Indian descent and is worth an estimated $830 million, or about 217 million heads of iceberg lettuce. Damn, that’s a lotta… lettuce.