Truss announces her resignation as the UK Prime Minister
Liz Truss has announced her resignation as prime minister.
Speaking outside Downing Street, she says she has told King Charles she is resigning as leader of the Conservative Party.
An unprecedented crisis in British politics
I’ve never seen anything like this. Let’s be clear what’s happened: yesterday Truss told us she was a fighter.
But the level of chaos in government, Parliament and the Conservative Party has led Truss to a point where she knows she can’t continue.
What happens now is the quickest turnover of power we have seen in modern times.
This is a lightning speed change. The question is whether the Conservative Party can coalesce around a new leader and whether the party can avoid a general election.
In October we are going to have our third PM of the year.
This is an unprecedented situation and an unprecedented short tenure as PM and an unprecedented crisis in British politics.
Liz Truss has been in office for just 45 days – the shortest tenure of any UK prime minister. The second shortest serving PM was George Canning, who served for 119 days before dying in 1827.
Trouble began when her first Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, spooked the financial markets with his mini-budget on 23 September.
Since then, Conservative disquiet has morphed into widespread anger within the parliamentary party.
Her stepping down today follows dramatic scenes in the House of Commons last night over a vote on fracking. Calls for her to go kept growing in the hours afterwards.
