Liz Truss joins ranks of shortest-serving world leaders

Liz Truss, with her husband Hugh O'Leary, arrives to make a statement outside 10 Downing Street, London, where she announced her resignation as British prime minister.

Coup, assassination, abdication, suicide and illness — all have contributed to history’s shortest-serving leaderships, though none, in the literal sense at least, can be said to apply to Liz Truss.

But at just 45 days, she faces the ignominy of being the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister by some degree.