Liz Truss’s humiliating fall from power came after an extraordinary, dysfunctional 44 days which rocked Britain.
After arriving in Downing Street following a bruising two-month leadership battle with Rishi Sunak, the country’s third female Prime Minister pledged to turn the UK into a low tax, high growth “aspiration nation”.
Within six weeks her bold economic plan — dubbed Trussenomics — was in tatters as financial markets reacted in horror to her mini budget which slashed taxes by £45 billion, crashing the pound and sending the cost of borrowing soaring.
By the time she had replaced her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, a long-time friend, with Jeremy Hunt last week, financial markets had stabilised. But it was too late to save her premiership leaving her with the unwanted legacy of being the UK’s shortest-serving PM.
Tory peer Lord Hayward today described her downfall as “depressing but inevitable”.
He added: “It has been far, far worse than anyone could have imagined but really the problem started on July 7 when Boris Johnson stepped down. At that point all Cabinet ministers should have remained in place and there should have been a rapid leadership election.
“So the problems were building and building and are not entirely of her own making but she certainly added to them.” Another Tory grandee, former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, said Ms Truss’s brief reign had badly damaged Britain’s reputation on the world stage.
“It was all exactly as was predicted during her campaign and Rishi Sunak was brave enough to explain why her economic plans would not work.
“Her economic policy was totally unsupported by evidence and her premiership was based on a series of non-deliverable proposals — she herself acknowledged that in her resignation speech yesterday.
“It’s been hugely, hugely damaging both nationally and internationally. We look like a laughing stock.”
Vowing to hit the ground running after entering No10 on September 6, Ms Truss’s plans were then put on the back burner for almost a fortnight as the nation mourned the death of the Queen.
But she and her Chancellor wasted no time once the period of grieving was over, announcing an economic growth plan to MPs on September 23 which set out tax cuts worth £45 billion and confirming an energy support package for all families over the next two years which could have cost over £100 billion.
The failure to publish an accompanying forecast for the public finances by the independent fiscal watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility only served to undermine confidence as the financial markets were badly rattled by the plan.
Within days the Bank of England was forced to step in with an emergency bond buying programme worth £65 billion to prop up pension funds which were badly exposed as bond yields soared.
As Ms Truss tried to shore up her premiership she reversed the most toxic of her tax cuts — the abolition of the 45p top-rate for those earning £150,000 — at her party’s annual conference in Birmingham.
But amid signs of growing discontent among her backbench MPs, she was forced to go further by sacking her close ally Mr Kwarteng and bringing in the more moderate figure of Mr Hunt who immediately tore up most of her economic plans as he tried to fill a black hole in the public finances of around £40 billion.
On Wednesday as more and more Conservative MPs voiced their concerns about her leadership, she sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman apparently over a breach of security but amid reports of a row over relaxing immigration limits.
Later that day party discipline broke down in extraordinary scenes in the Commons as Tory MPs were accused of manhandling their colleagues during a vote on fracking which descended into chaos.
The final straw came when Sir Graham Brady, chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, went to No10 yesterday lunchtime to tell Ms Truss she had lost the confidence of her own MPs. Within an hour she had quit, with the briefest of resignation statements.
The historian Sir Anthony Seldon, who wrote the Impossible Office, the History of The British Prime Minister, summed up the unprecedented nature of the past few months. He told the BBC: “The combination of the rapid transition of prime ministers, chancellors, home secretaries, all combined with losing a monarch… We have never been here before. It’s beyond crazy.”
