Liz Truss's time as prime minister in numbers

Liz Truss is done.

The prime minister's spectacular reign in 10 Downing Street came to an end on October 20th 2022, less than two months after she was elected to the role by Conservative party members.

However, despite this, her policies, harkening back to the days of Margaret Thatcher, proved to be very unpopular, mostly with the financial markets.

Following the announcement of her and Kwasi Kwarteng's mini-budget which sent the pound plummeting and the UK economy into utter turmoil, the writing was more or less on the wall for Truss but she soldiered on for a few more weeks.

Then in order to calm down the markets she sacked Kwarteng which really kickstarted her downward spiral. After appointing Jeremy Hunt to succeed Kwarteng, he then proceeded to overturn almost all of the policies in the mini-budget.

Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

After that, her home secretary Suella Braverman left her role after she sent an official document via a personal email and then that same day there were talks of 'manhandling' and 'bullying' of Tory MPs in the Commons lobby who were refusing to vote with the government on a fracking bill.

So with everything seemingly against her Truss had no choice but to resign which she did, leaving behind one of the most chaotic premierships the UK is likely to ever see. So in her honour here is Liz Truss's time as PM in numbers.

45 days as prime minister

This remarkably small amount of time now makes her the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history.

54 days spent trying to get elected

To make matters worse, she actually spent more days trying to get elected during the summer's leadership campaign.

1 UK economy tanked

We all know about this. It was the domino that sent her entire premiership tumbling.

2 chancellors and 2 home secretaries

After Kwasi Kwarteng was ousted as chancellor for implementing the plans that Liz Truss had asked for we should add he was replaced with Jeremy Hunt. Then after Suella Braverman's snafu with her emails, she was given the boot as home secretary with Grant Shapps replacing her.

A GDP low of $1.0327

As mentioned, Truss's economic woes really snowballed everything that led to her resignation but the real killer was how badly the pound fell against the value of the US dollar.

3 PMQs sessions

Truss never really got a chance to flex her muscles at Prime Minister's Questions as she only got to go to three. That being said, judging by her efforts in those sessions we wouldn't have placed a bet on her getting any better.

3 meetings with the monarch

It's not often that prime ministers get to meet two monarchs but in just her 44 days as PM Truss managed to meet the Queen just days before she died. Then, following the Queen's death, she met King Charles III not once but twice leading to a rather awkward exchange during their second encounter.

13 MPs who called for her to resign

Unlike Boris Johnson, who was ousted by basically his entire cabinet resigning, Truss was given the boot by MPs who were calling for her to resign - of which there were 13 of by the end.

An 89-second resignation speech

Given that her reign was so short it was only appropriate that Truss gave such a short resignation speech outside of Downing Street on a cold and wet Thursday afternoon.

36 points behind Labour in the polls

Another aspect of why the Tories were so unhappy with Truss was the huge lead that Labour managed to gain over the Conservatives while she was prime minister. The most recent survey showed that if a general election were held today that the Tories wouldn't even be in opposition anymore and that the Tories would have only 20 seats left.

1 defeat to a lettuce

When it was all said and done the one enduring image of Truss's time of PM will be a picture of her next to a lettuce as the Daily Star rather ingenuously decided to wager a challenge to see if Truss could outlast a rotting lettuce. Suffice to say, she didn't.

It is a simple and fundamental principle that the government derives its democratic legitimacy from the people. The future of the country must not be decided by plotting and U-turns at Westminster; it must be decided by the people in a general election. And for this reason The Independent is calling for an election to be held. Have your say and sign our election petition by clicking here.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.