Looking back at her seven short weeks has reminded me that she was not unlucky, or ill-advised, or a victim of an establishment stitch-up, but the author of her own misfortune.
Quoting Seneca, Liz Truss said as she departed Number 10 that “it’s not because things are difficult than we do not dare, it’s because we do not dare that they are difficult.”
After Penny Mordaunt dropped out two minutes before the 2 PM deadline, Rishi Sunak was formally chosen as the next leader of the Conservative Party.
Despite claiming he had the support of 102 Conservative MPs, Boris Johnson pulled out of the leadership race at 9 PM, accusing Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt of not coming together in the national interest.
For the second time in the year, the Conservative Party entered a leadership election.
Just after 1:30 PM, Truss emerged from Number 10 with her husband to explain she could not “deliver the mandate on which [she] was elected”, and announced her resignation as Conservative leader.
At PMQs, Liz Truss announced “I’m a fighter, not a quitter”. By that evening, she was discussing her resignation with her husband.
Liz Truss’s authority continued to weaken. Proposals for spending reductions – including cutting schools capital spending – shocked ministers.
In an interview to the BBC, Liz Truss admitted that “mistakes were made” so far in her premiership, but that she would “lead the Conservatives into the next general election”.
The Sunday papers brought the news that Jeremy Hunt was to “postpone” the penny cut to income tax that had formed the centre-piece of Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget.
Kwasi Kwarteng arrived back from Washington on the morning of the 14th of October to discover he had been sacked.
Simon Case and James Bowler – the new Treasury Permanent Secretary – warned Liz Truss that she needed to U-turn on plans to cut corporation tax in order to restore Britain’s market credibility and avoid being treated “like a third-world country”.
Liz Truss told PMQs that she was “not planning public spending reductions”. Kwasi Kwarteng travelled to Washington.
Andrew Bailey signalled the Bank of England would end its intervention in the pensions market on the coming Friday, whilst signalling something different in private.
As Liz Truss and Michelle Donelan posed with the successful Lionesses, Kwasi Kwarteng brought forward his new “debt-cutting plan” to October the 31st