Just 44 days after she stood at the same lectern in the same spot to deliver her maiden speech as Prime Minister Liz Truss addressed a shocked nation to resign.
The Union and Ukraine flags hung limply on the No10 flagpoles in the breezeless Westminster sky as, just before 1.35pm, humiliated Truss emerged from behind the world’s most famous black door to quit.
“Resign!” cried a heckler with a loudhailer in Whitehall.
Just a few more seconds to wait, my friend.
Some 25-and-a-half hours after she told the Commons: “I am a fighter not a quitter!” Truss, um, quit.
Bizarrely, the doomed leader still paraded the rictus grin which has characterised her Premiership.
Truly it is the shield with which she confronts grim realities.
Her loyal husband Hugh O’Leary stood 20ft to her left, hovering back on the kerb better to observe the autumn leaves rotting in the Downing Street gutter.
In front of Truss stood ranks of journalists, TV crews and photographers - our numbers smaller than usual because of the very short notice given for this simple yet dramatic, latest political death.
Staff from the Foreign Office had gathered at the iron gates directly opposite the No10 entrance to witness this fresh felling of a PM.
Audible gasps echoed around the sunlight-deprived Victorian street as, in her 88-second address, she confirmed what everyone but Truss had known for days was her inevitable fate.
The briefest of departure speeches over, she closed her folder and walked back inside No10 followed by devoted Hugh.
As reporters filed out, the armed police guarding the Downing Street gates were baffled by what had just happened.
“Has she gone then? Really?” said one officer.
Indeed, she has.
