It all started so well as Liz Truss emerged as a clear winner in the hard-won leadership battle but less that six weeks later, Britain's shortest-serving Prime Minister admitted defeat and resigned after watching her economic strategy go up in smoke.
Ms Truss secured 57% of Tory members' votes less than two months ago, beating rival Rishi Sunak to the coveted position, but her 'bold plan' ended in chaos and ensured her premiership will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
Here, we take a look at the key moments in her short-lived premiership.
Read more: Liz Truss becomes shortest-serving Prime Minister: How long all the UK's leaders lasted in Number 10
September 5: Liz Truss wins the Tory leadership contest to become the country’s next Prime minister. She promises a “bold plan” to cut taxes and grow the economy and “deliver on the energy crisis”.
September 6: Ms Truss becomes Prime Minister after being invited to form a new government by the Queen at Balmoral, the last engagement the monach carried out before her death. Later that afternoon, she speaks of her 'honour' to take on the role “at a vital time for our country”. Kwasi Kwarteng is appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.
September 7: Ms Truss uses her first Prime Minister’s Questions to promise to work with MPs across the House to tackle “the challenges we face” at a “vital time for our country” and confirms she will set out her package of support to deal with soaring energy bills the following day.
September 8: In Parliament shortly before midday, the PM announces a new energy price guarantee and promises support for businesses struggling with bills for six months, with targeted help for vulnerable firms beyond that. She describes it as “the moment to be bold”, adding: “We are facing a global energy crisis and there are no cost-free options.” Soon afterwards, Buckingham Palace issued a statement saying doctors were concerned for the Queen’s health, and at 6.30pm, Buckingham Palace announces that “The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.”
September 9: The new King Charles II holds his first in-person audience with Ms Truss at Buckingham Palace. Politics all but comes to a halt as the country observes a national period of mourning.
September 19: The Queen’s funeral is held at Westminster Abbey.
September 23: Chancellor Mr Kwarteng announces the biggest raft of tax cuts for half a century, funded by more than £70b of increased borrowing. He sets out a package which includes abolishing the top rate of income tax and axing the cap on bankers’ bonuses while adding restrictions to the welfare system. The pound falls to a fresh 37-year low but the Chancellor insists his plan will encourage investment in the UK and rejects the suggestion his economic announcement was “a gamble”.
September 29: In her first public comments since the mini-budget market turmoil, the PM insists the Government had to “take urgent action to get the economy growing”.
October 2: Ms Truss acknowledges mistakes over the mini-budget and admits she could have done more to prepare the ground for Mr Kwarteng’s financial statement, but she is accused of throwing her Chancellor “under the bus” by saying the abolition of the 45p top rate of tax was made by him, and not discussed with the Cabinet. She also defends her tax-cutting plan and refuses to rule out public spending cuts.
October 3: Despite Ms Truss defending the 45p tax rate in a TV interview filmed just hours before, Chancellor Kwarteng admits “we get it, and we have listened,” as he and the PM perform a U-turn to abandon their plan to abolish the 45p rate of income tax for top earners.
October 4: In an interview with GB News, Mr Kwarteng says it is important to place the so-called fiscal event in the “context” of the Queen’s death and funeral.
October 5: Ms Truss pledges she will “get us through the tempest” and “get Britain moving” as she delivers her first Tory conference speech as party leader in Manchester.
October 8: Four Cabinet ministers urge colleagues to rally behind Ms Truss as the PM battles following a week of infighting.
October 10: Bowing to pressure, Mr Kwarteng completes another U-turn and agrees to bring forward the publication of his financial strategy and independent economic forecasts and agrees to set out his medium-term fiscal plan alongside Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predictions on October 31.
October 11: As Parliament returns, the Chancellor is warned during a session of Treasury questions that the Government’s economic credibility would be further damaged if he tries to push through the policies without the support of Conservative MPs.
October 12: Ms Truss insists she will not cut spending to balance the books, despite economists and the financial markets continuing to question her plans. She is adamnet that she is not planning public spending reductions, but insists taxpayers’ money will be used well.
October 13: Mr Kwarteng says his “total focus is on delivering on the mini-budget” after speculation about a U-turn on the measures.
October 14: Mr Kwarteng flies back early from International Monetary Fund talks in Washington and is sacked, saying he has accepted Ms Truss’ request he “stand aside” as Chancellor. The Prime Minister replaces him with Jeremy Hunt, the former foreign secretary who backed her rival Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership contest. Ms Truss dismisses calls for her resignation at an eight-minute press conference in Downing Street, during which she takes just four questions. She announces she is abandoning Mr Kwarteng’s commitment to drop the planned rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25%, even though it was a central plank of her leadership campaign.
October 15: The new Chancellor indicates the PM’s immediate economic plan is now largely defunct in a series of broadcast interviews, criticising the “mistakes” of the Truss administration and warns of “difficult decisions” to come on tax and spending. US President Joe Biden also appears to join in the criticism of Ms Truss’s original plan, telling reporters “I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake”.
October 16: Former minister Crispin Blunt becomes the first Tory MP to publicly call for Ms Truss to quit, saying the “game is up” for the Prime Minister. He is followed by Andrew Bridgen and Jamie Wallis, but while other senior figures express deep unease with the PM’s leadership, they stop short of calling for her to go. Labour urges Ms Truss to come before Parliament to face MPs.
October 17: Mr Hunt ditches the bulk of the PM’s economic strategy in an emergency statement designed to calm the markets, scaling back the energy support package and scraping “almost all” the tax cuts announced by his predecessor. He also abandons plans to slash the basic rate of income tax by 1p, saying it will remain at 20p in the pound until the country can afford to reduce it. The cut in dividend tax promised by Mr Kwarteng is also axed, along with VAT-free shopping for overseas tourists, the freeze on alcohol duty, and the easing of the IR35 rules for the self-employed. Ms Truss sits silently in the Commons as her Chancellor bins huge chunks of her plan.
The PM admits to a meeting of the One Nation group of Tory MPs that “we tried to do too much too quickly”, and in an interview with the BBC, apologises for her “mistakes” and pledges to lead the Tories into the next general election.
October 18: Ms Truss survives a meeting of the Cabinet without any ministers calling for her to quit, while Mr Hunt tells colleagues they must review departmental budgets to find ways to save taxpayers’ money. There is another backlash when Downing Street indicates ministers could ditch their commitment to the pensions triple lock. The Prime Minister addresses Tory MPs from the European Research Group (ERG), telling them that she found axing her tax-slashing programme “painful” and did it “because she had to”.
October 19: The PM declares she is a “fighter, not a quitter” and insists she is “completely committed” to the triple lock on state pensions at PMQs. Later that day. Tory MPs are told a Labour vote in the Commons seeking to ban fracking is being treated as a “confidence motion” and deputy chief whip Craig Whittaker warns his colleagues the vote is a “100% hard” three-line whip, indicating that dozens of Conservatives who oppose the controversial gas extraction method face being kicked out of the parliamentary party if they do not follow orders.
But confusion ensues when climate minister Graham Stuart tells the Commons: “Quite clearly this is not a confidence vote”, leading to ugly scenes at Westminster, with Cabinet ministers Therese Coffey and Jacob Rees-Mogg among a group of senior Tories accused of pressuring colleagues to go into the “no” lobby. Labour former minister Chris Bryant claims some MPs were “physically manhandled”.
To add to the chaos, Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who had stood against Ms Truss in the Tory leadership race, dramatically quits, citing a “technical infringement” of the ministerial rules, and criticising Ms Truss’s “tumultuous” premiership.
Labour’s fracking motion is defeated by 230 votes to 326, but there is speculation that Chief Whip Wendy Morton and her deputy, Craig Whittaker, have resigned in fury at the handling of the affair. At 9.49pm – more than two hours after the vote – No 10 issues a statement saying both remain in post. Overnight, Downing Street says Mr Stuart was “mistakenly” told to say it was not a confidence motion, adding that Conservative MPs were “fully aware” it was subject to a three-line whip.
October 20: Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned after 44 days, the shortest serving prime minister in British history.
Now read:
- Who could replace Liz Truss and become the new UK Prime Minister
- What happens next as Liz Truss resigns as UK Prime Minister less than two months after taking charge
- Councillors reject plan to demolish Gosforth synagogue for 'incongruous and obtrusive' flats
- Worry over 'incredibly challenging' West Denton leisure centre as work delayed and costs rise
- Bids confirmed for low-tax North East investment zones to create '23,000 jobs and 8,000 homes'
