British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who announced her resignation on Thursday after just six weeks in office, is remembered as the shortest-serving prime minister of the past 100 years.
AFP looks at the five executives who have had the shortest time at 10 Downing Street over the past century:
– Liz Truss: 44 days –
Former Foreign Secretary Truss took office on September 6 following a party revolt against former Conservative leader Boris Johnson.
Britain’s third female PM beat Johnson’s former finance chief Rishi Sunak for the top job in a platform of sweeping tax cuts that won over the Tory base.
But the mini-budget unveiled by her finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, which promises tax cuts for everyone, including top earners, to be funded by massive borrowing, caused market chaos.
With the pound taking a hit, Truss and Kwarteng were forced into an about-face.
Truss later dismissed Kwarteng, but by then she was mortally weakened, and when her Home Secretary resigned and growing numbers of Tory MPs rebelled, she fell to her sword.
– Andrew Bonar Law: 209 days –
The Canadian-born son of a Scottish clergyman, who reigned less than a year from 1922 to 1923, was the shortest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century.
The leader of the Conservative Party held senior positions in David Lloyd George’s cabinet during the First World War, but later withdrew the Tories’ support from the charismatic Liberal Prime Minister.
Lloyd George was forced to resign and Bonar Law, who lost his two eldest sons in World War I, succeeded him.
After 209 days, the man described as the “forgotten” British prime minister himself resigned for health reasons and died six months later.
– Alec Douglas Home: 363 Days –
Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in October 1963 after being asked by the ailing Prime Minister Harold MacMillan to replace him.
Douglas-Home, who came from a prominent Scottish noble family, led the country for a year before the Conservatives were pushed into opposition by Harold Wilson’s Labor Party in October 1964. He later served as the celebrated Secretary of State under Edward Heath.
– Anthony Eden: 1 year 279 days –
Anthony Eden was a much-vaunted Secretary of State under wartime leader Winston Churchill, but had much less success in the top post.
He was Britain’s top diplomat three times, in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, but when he got his chance to take over after Churchill’s resignation in 1955 he was suffering from ill health.
His handling of the Suez Crisis in 1956 proved to be his downfall, with the Anglo-French attack on Egypt over the canal’s nationalization being widely condemned.
Eden never recovered politically from the fiasco and resigned on January 9, 1957.
– Gordon Brown: 2 years 319 days –
Brown was a star finance minister under Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007.
But after spending a decade as a leader-on-hold, the dour Scot struggled to engage with the public when he became prime minister.
During his campaign in the 2010 election, he stumbled badly after being caught by a live television microphone describing a widowed pensioner he had just met as “biased”.
Labor lost the election and Brown resigned.
– Other –
In the 18th and 19th centuries, British prime ministers often served less than a year.
The Duke of Devonshire lived only 225 days in 1756-57 while the 2nd Earl of Shelburne lived to 265 days in 1782-83.
In the 19th century, the Duke of Wellington served just 22 days during his second term as Prime Minister in 1834.
