Just 44 days after becoming prime minister, Liz Truss has announced she is to step down.
Until now the shortest-serving PM was George Canning who died in August 1827. He spent only 119 days in office.
Ms Truss succeeded Boris Johnson as PM after winning a clear victory over Rishi Sunak in a ballot of Conservative Party members.
Two days later, Queen Elizabeth II died, the nation entered a period of mourning and normal politics was suspended.
But at the end of the week which began with the late Queen’s funeral, the seeds of Ms Truss’s political demise had already been sown – in then Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget.
Born in Oxford in 1975, Ms Truss has described her father, a mathematics professor, and her mother, a nurse, as “left-wing”.
As a young girl, her mother took her on marches for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, an organisation vehemently opposed to the Thatcher government’s decision to allow US nuclear warheads to be installed at RAF Greenham Common, west of London.
Though she is now proudly a Conservative from Leeds, back then she was a Scottish liberal.
In a brief speech outside Downing Street, Ms Truss said the Conservative Party had elected her on a mandate to cut taxes and boost economic growth.
But given the situation, Ms Truss said: “I recognise that I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and other opposition parties called for an immediate general election following Ms Truss’s resignation speech.
Ms Truss said she would remain in post until a successor formally takes over as party leader and is appointed prime minister by King Charles.
While Mr Hunt – who was appointed chancellor last week – will not challenge for the leadership, none of the candidates who stood against Ms Truss in the previous contest have indicated whether they would stand.
