New measurement alert: Liz Truss inspires new Register standard

We didn't have a time unit. That... is... a... disgrace

Reg Standards Bureau She may have lost to an iceberg lettuce in the longevity stakes, but Liz Truss managed to win one thing yesterday: serving 44 days before resigning, she is now Shortest-lived Prime Minister in UK History.

That's less than half the time Britain was led by its second shortest tenured PM, George Canning (who also penned the odd dodgy poem about the free market), who lasted 118 days – just under 2.7 Truss – until he died in 1827.

Still, both of them lasted much longer than Anthony Scaramucci, communications director in Donald Trump's White House for 11 days, who tweeted yesterday that the Conservative leader "lasted 4.1 Scaramuccis."

The Register notes he may have been a decimal point out there – the comms man, kicked out after calling co-worker Reince Priebus "a fucking paranoid schizophrenic" and insisting that, unlike former White House chief strategist and now convicted criminal Steve Bannon, he himself was not "trying to suck my own cock," claims to have been in his job for 11 days.

Truss, on the other hand, was in office 44 rather than 45 days (September 6 - halfway through October 20) before resigning, meaning she lasted 4 Scaramucci rather than 4.1. But that's as may be. We are nothing if not pedantic here at the Reg Standards Soviet.

He went on to suggest other new measures of a public official's time in the job: "1 Scaramucci = carton of milk" and "1 Truss = head of lettuce."

Truss was the third PM in four years, following mop-headed Boris Johnson (24.54 Truss), who we're sure our British readers are delighted to know may have actually thrown his hat into the leadership ring once again, according to a report in The Times.

Johnson had been in office a full three-years-and-a-Truss before resigning after numerous scandals (breaking COVID laws, appointing a party whip accused of sexually inappropriate behavior, losing the support of his party after 50 MPs resigned) – just like the two UK prime ministers before him (Theresa May ducked out because nobody liked her version of Brexit; David Cameron left after UK voted to leave the European Union in a referendum he called to prevent more calls for this – a spectacular own goal).

As for our new metric, while our Reg online standards converter includes measures that involve time in the equation, as when we handily allow you to calculate how speedily you travel as a percentage of the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum, we haven't got a converter allowing for a Reg unit of time. To paraphrase the former prime minister: That is a disgrace. Henceforth, we will measure out stretches of time in Truss. ®