Today marks a year since Liz Truss became PM and as you can imagine it has not been looked back on fondly.
Her time at the top may have been (very) short, but there was no shortage of calamities during the shortest-serving PM’s 49 days of chaos in Number 10 Downing Street.
For the record the second longest serving PM made it to 119 days, and was clocked up by George Canning. Mr Canning has the excuse of having died in office back in 1827.
Year since Liz Truss became PM
Liz Truss became the 56th British PM on September 5.
The former Foreign Secretary’s victory over (now PM) Rishi Sunak was confirmed after she secured the votes of 81,000 Tory members – 56% of those polled.
The highlight (or lowlight) of her tenure was a mini-budget that sent the markets tumbling and the pound to record lows. She was also famously outlasted by a lettuce.
Her plan to ditch the income tax rate for the UK’s highest earners and an end to a cap on bankers’ bonuses sparked a fierce backlash from the public and a lot of other MPs.
Her big bang approach did not get the reaction in the city she planned and it led to the Bank of England pledging up to £65 billion to buy government gilts in order to save pension funds.
Truss and her Chancellor Mr Kwarteng were forced into a humiliating U-turn, then the Chancellor was forced to step down and many accused Truss of throwing him under the bus.
It led to Jeremy Hunt being named as his successor.
It looked as if he was given the freedom to completely redraw the UK’s finance plans.
The end
Truss didn’t apologise instead indicated they simply went too fast, at a cringe-worthy press conference she said: “It is clear that parts of our mini-Budget went further and faster than markets were expecting, so the way we are delivering our mission now has to change.”
Ms Truss finally accepted the inevitable on October 20 and admitted: “I recognise given the situation I can’t deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.”
But she still had one more shock announcement Truss said would stay on in No10 until a successor was chosen.
Reactions
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There is always Dan Wootton’s take…
Related: Labour: ‘PM directly responsible for the crisis’ says Shadow education secretary
