[imagesource: Reuters]

After just 44 days in office, embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced she would step down from office on Thursday.

This makes her the UK’s shortest-serving leader ever.

She left office with a miserable 10% favorability rating among the British public, according to a recent YouGov poll, which compared to her predecessor, Boris Johnson, who resigned in disgrace in July, is quite sad. Johnson has an approval rating of 29%, the poll shows.

If she’d struck around for more of her downward spiral, she could have been on track to match Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, who has a favorability rating of 4% among the British public.

Yikes.

King Charles III also reportedly didn’t like the lass:

The New York Post reported why Truss’ tumultuous stint was ultimately brought down:

[It was thanks to] a fiscal fiasco over her proposal to cut taxes on the wealthy while raising corporate taxes — which faced hostile opposition from her own Conservative Party and sent financial markets into a weeks-long slide.

While lawmakers scramble to endorse candidates to replace her in an internal election, another NY Post article contemplates all the other leaders that served an even shorter time than Liz.

France’s King Louis XIX takes the cake:

Compared to the roughly 20 minutes for France’s King Louis XIX in 1830, Truss served an eternity.

He ascended to the throne after the abdication of his father, Charles X, during the July Revolution, though he was never actually proclaimed king before stepping down mere minutes later, according to the Guardian.

Lady Jane Gray, an English noblewoman and great-granddaughter of Henry VII, gained the nickname “Nine Days Queen” after she claimed the throne of England, Wales, and Ireland at the tender age of 16 from July 10 to the 19th in 1553:

Poor Jane was executed the following year after the country opted for Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII with Catherine of Aragon, instead.

Brutal.

All the other leaders made it out fast and furious because of the Grim Reaper, which kind of makes Liz more of a legend on the scale of shortest-serving leaders:

Among British prime ministers, the shortest-serving one until Truss bowed out was the Tory statesman George Canning, who served 119 days until he died of tuberculosis on Aug. 8, 1827, the news outlet reported.

Then there was Alec Douglas-Home, who lasted 363 days before being replaced by Harold Wilson.

Luis II of Portugal, who became king on February 1, 1908, when his father, Carlos I, was assassinated is another short-timer. Luis was fatally wounded in the incident and died about 20 minutes after his dad.

Things got weird quickly in Germany:

In Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels technically became chancellor for one night after Adolf Hitler killed himself in 1945 – but he made a quick exit when he and his wife, Magda, poisoned their six kids before committing suicide.

And America:

In the US, President William Henry Harrison lasted just a month – dying on his 32nd day in office – after delivering an inaugural address that lasted about two hours as the ninth commander-in-chief. Harrison also became the first to die in office.

Harrison’s doctor, Thomas Miller, declared that he died of “pneumonia of the lower lobe of the right lung, complicated by congestion of the liver,” according to the New York Times.

You get the gist.

If you don’t, Listverse makes note of ’10 Leaders with the Shortest Time in Power’, which you can peruse in your own time.

It is a pity that Liz said she “cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected” a day after pledging to remain in office as “a fighter, not a quitter”.

Who is going to play Liz Truss on the last 10 seconds of “The Crown?”

— Rohita Kadambi (@RohitaKadambi) October 20, 2022

[sources:nypost]