Never has a prime minister managed to bring down their own premiership in such a short and chaotic space of time.
Just 44 days is all it took for Liz Truss to go from being cheered into Downing Street to collapsing her government and resigning from the top job.
She now becomes the shortest-lived prime minister in history.
And for almost a quarter of that time government business was not even happening because of the Queen’s death.
Others have described her as the “worst prime minister in history”, a damning and perhaps well-deserved legacy.
She lost the confidence of her MPs, crashed the pound and had to U-turn on her mini-Budget.
Not even throwing Kwasi Kwarteng under the bus and bringing Jeremy Hunt back to the front benches as chancellor was going to be enough to save her.
Her appalling leadership has inflicted untold misery on to people who are now left with out-of-control energy bills, rising food prices and soaring mortgage payments.
Tories can’t be trusted, we need a general election
There is never a good time to hold a general election, especially not when the government should be focusing on such a galling in-tray.
But there is simply no other way out of this crisis.
Having only party members voting for the next prime minister has proved a disastrous option.
Doing it again would see a tiny percentage of the population choosing between those who could not win against Liz Truss, or even Boris Johnson, who was forced out in disgrace only months ago.
Neither option should be allowed to happen.
There is no way back now for the Conservatives – Ms Truss has closed the door on any chance of that.
It is now time to hand the power back to the people in an immediate general election to end this farce that has taken over Westminster.
Conversation