After a bruising start to her tenure, the knives are already out for Liz Truss - but if she can hang on until after New Year she will at least avoid the humiliation of becoming the UK’s shortest-serving PM. Ms Truss has only been in charge for just over a month, but there is already open rebellion among her own backbenchers - with some thought to have submitted letters of no confidence in the new PM.
The “mini-budget” announced by her Chancellor Kwarsi Kwarteng was met with widespread anger, saw the pound tank and Conservative support dwindle in the polls to such an extent that a resurgent Labour Party could now be looking at a landslide victory at the next election. Now she is under pressure to show how she can balance the books without radically cutting public services - with some MPs telling her to consider more policy u-turns on top of her change of heart over scrapping the 45p tax rate for those earning £150,000 or more.
An appearance in front of the 1922 Committee appears to have done little to silence the critics in her own party with a number of Tories continuing to brief against her in the media. Meanwhile, a petition calling for an immediate general election has passed half a million votes - meaning it has been signed by well over five times as many people who voted for Ms Truss to be PM - and her odds of surviving the year have been slashed to as short as 4/1, according to online gambling website Oddschecker.
But if she can hang on in 10 Downing Street until at least January 4, 2023, then she will avoid the humiliation of becoming the UK’s shortest-serving PM. That title is currently held by George Canning, who became Tory Prime Minister in 1827 and only lasted for 119 days in Number 10.
But Canning was seriously ill from tuberculosis and was forced to quit due to ill health. He died later that year.
His successor, Frederick Robinson - the Viscount Goderich - fared little better, but did at least survive the experience. His tenure as PM lasted just 144 days, hampered by his own ill health and a lack of support from King George IV.
According to some reports, the end of his term came in an interview with the King when he was humiliatingly asked to arrange his own replacement. The meeting literally ended in tears and Goderich became known as “the Blubberer” - in addition to becoming the UK’s second shortest-serving PM.
In more recent times, Sir Alec Douglas-Home managed to survive a full year and a day before he was ousted in the 1964 election. But if Ms Truss is to last longer than her immediate Conservative Party predecessors Boris Johnson (three years and 44 days) and Theresa May (three years and 11 days), she will have to not only hang on until the next election - she will have to dramatically overturn the polls to win it.
The current Parliament first met on Tuesday, December 17 and will automatically dissolve on Tuesday, 17 December 2024 - unless it has been dissolved sooner by the King. If Ms Truss hung on until the last possible moment before calling an election, voters would go to the polls 25 days later.
That means, if she were to lose the election, Ms Truss would have been PM for two years and 129 days. But if she did survive to a late general election, then she would have outlasted 17 other PMs and at least achieved some respectability in her longevity at Number 10.
