• British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned as the Conservative Party leader saying she can no longer deliver the mandate she was elected on last month, ending her tenure at 10 Downing Street on her 45th day in the job.

• The 47-year-old outgoing Prime Minister will stay in charge until her successor is elected by the governing Tory party, with a speeded-up leadership election to be completed by next week.

• Truss said she had spoken to King Charles III to notify him of her resignation and also met the 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady, in charge of Tory leadership elections.

• Her resignation on her 45th day in office makes her the shortest-serving Prime Minister in Britain’s history. The second shortest serving PM was George Canning, who served for 119 days before he died in office in 1827.

Why did the PM resign?

• Liz Truss took office last month with hopes and promises of reinvigorating the British economy and putting it on the path to long-term success. It didn’t go to plan.

• Instead, Truss’s tenure was scarred by turmoil as her economic policies threatened the country’s financial stability, driving the pound to record lows, sparking chaos on bond markets and increasing mortgage costs for millions of people.

• Her decision to announce 105 billion pounds ($116 billion) of tax cuts and spending increases without providing details on how she would pay for it unnerved investors, who warned of soaring public debt.

• That undermined confidence in the government’s ability to pay its bills and raised questions about the economic credentials of a new PM who took office after a deeply divisive contest for leadership of the governing Conservative Party.

• Last week, she was forced to sack her finance minister and closest political ally, Kwasi Kwarteng, and abandon almost all her economic programme after their plans for vast unfunded tax cuts crashed the pound and British bonds. 

• The disarray surrounding the economic plan weakened Truss’s authority as Prime Minister, and ultimately led to her decision to resign.

Will there be another general election?

• Legally, the government isn’t required to call an election until December 2024, five years after the Conservatives won a landslide victory under the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

• But, opposition parties and some members of the public are demanding an immediate election after the uproar of recent months. Truss was forced out of office after less than two months on the job and she followed Johnson, who resigned after his authority was undermined by a series of scandals.

• The damage done by Truss and Johnson has cratered support for the Conservatives. Because of this, the new Prime Minister is expected to resist calls for an early election, and instead try to use the next two years to rebuild confidence before going to voters.

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