© Getty Images

Rishi Sunak -

In September 2022, Rishi Sunak contested the Conservative Party leadership election but lost to Liz Truss after Boris Johnson’s resignation. Truss’ time as prime minister was short, as she stepped down after only six weeks due to economic instability triggered by her policies. Sunak swiftly rallied Conservative MPs behind him, securing his position as prime minister

© Getty Images

Rishi Sunak -

Upon assuming office, he set out key goals: reducing inflation, fostering economic growth, lowering national debt, improving NHS waiting times, and tackling illegal immigration across the Channel. While inflation and economic growth showed improvement, the other three areas deteriorated under his leadership. After losing the 2024 general election, Sunak resigned as prime minister on July 5.

© Getty Images

Liz Truss -

Liz Truss, born in Oxford in 1975, won the leadership of the Conservative Party and was made prime minister of Britain on September 7 2022. What ensued was several weeks of chaos as Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, her newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a widely unpopular "mini-budget" which sent markets into a panic and resulted in the British pound dropping in value. Despite attempts to backpedal after the budget plan was ridiculed, Truss was unable to salvage the situation. On October 20, she stepped out in front of Number 10 Downing Street for the second time in less than two months, this time to announce her resignation. 

© Getty Images

Liz Truss -

In her Speech, Truss defended her actions, saying, "We delivered on energy bills and on cutting national insurance, and we set out a vision for a low tax, high growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit." She continued, "I recognize though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party."

© Getty Images

Boris Johnson -

Boris Johnson, born in 1964 in New York City, became Prime Minister in 2019. He replaced Theresa May as head of the Conservative Party after her resignation.

© Getty Images

Boris Johnson -

Boris ran on a campaign largely focused on expediting the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union, along with tax breaks for citizens earning more than £50,000 (US$60,000) a year, although the latter promise fizzled out.

© Getty Images

Boris Johnson -

While Johnson was successful in pushing through Brexit, Johnson’s popularity plummeted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. After a start to 2022 that had been plagued with revelations of illegal parties at Downing Street while the rest of the UK was under a state-mandated lockdown in 2021, and, most recently, the promotion of alleged predator Chris Pincher to Deputy Chief Whip, Johnson's cabinet had begun to flee in droves by the middle of the year. By July 6, 2022, no less than 38 cabinet members had resigned, and by July 7, Johnson had announced his own resignation.

© Getty Images

Theresa May -

Theresa May, born in Sussex in 1956, served as the United Kingdom's second female prime minister, following Margaret Thatcher. May replaced David Cameron, who also resigned, in July 2016, and stepped down herself in July 2019. 

© Getty Images

Theresa May -

Unlike her predecessor, May was dedicated to developing, debating, and pushing through the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union, a topic that had become the center of UK politics.

© Getty Images

Theresa May -

After failing to negotiate or pass a meaningful Brexit deal, May fell out of favor within the Conservative Party. Pressured to abandon her post, May announced her resignation in May of 2019 and officially stepped down in July, to be replaced by Boris Johnson.

© Getty Images

David Cameron -

David Cameron, a native of London and born in 1966, became the youngest Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since the 1800s, taking office on May 11, 2010, at the age of 43.

© Getty Images

David Cameron -

Cameron was a well-liked prime minister for most of his tenure, and was re-elected in 2015. Cameron led an interventionist foreign policy, engaging militarily in both the First Libyan Civil War and ordering airstrikes against ISIS.

© Getty Images

David Cameron -

It was under Cameron that Brexit first came to the forefront of British politics after he set a date for a referendum vote regarding the status of the UK's EU membership. Cameron made it clear he believed the United Kingdom should remain a part of the EU, and after the vote swung against him, Cameron resigned, unwilling to lead his nation in a direction in which he did not believe.

© Getty Images

Gordon Brown -

Gordon Brown, former leader of the Labour Party, was born in Giffnock, Scotland, in 1951. Brown became Prime Minister in June of 2007, after the resignation of his predecessor, Tony Blair.

© Getty Images

Gordon Brown -

Serving as Prime Minister during the global market crash of 2008, Brown introduced a number of bailout packages to British banks and dramatically increased the size of the United Kingdom's national debt.

© Getty Images

Gordon Brown -

After losing the popular vote and producing dismal voting numbers for the Labour Party, Brown announced his resignation in May, 2010. After the rest of the Labour Party failed to form a coalition government, Brown suggested to Queen Elizabeth that the Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron, be named Prime Minister and invited to form his own government, thus ending the Labour party's control over the UK government.

© Getty Images

Tony Blair -

Tony Blair, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland, was a prime minister from the Labour Party who served from 1997 to 2007, making him the longest-serving prime minister from the Labour Party to date.

© Getty Images

Tony Blair -

Tony Blair started his tenure as one of the great Prime Ministers of the modern United Kingdom. His diplomatic work negotiating the Good Friday Agreement was essential to wrapping up the peace process in Northern Ireland and putting an end to the Troubles.

© Getty Images

Tony Blair -

However, Blair's popularity plummeted near the end of his career due to his support of the illegal and highly controversial 2003 invasion of Iraq. As time progressed, the Labour Party turned on Blair and pressured him to resign. On June 27, Blair officially stepped down and Gordon Brown took office that same day. 

© Getty Images

Margaret Thatcher -

One of the most famous and polarizing leaders in the modern history of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher served as the kingdom's first-ever female Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990.

© Getty Images

Margaret Thatcher -

Adored by the Conservative Party and detested by the left, Thatcher ran on policies of union-busting, privatization of publicly owned companies, and deregulation of the banking and financial industries. Her popularity quickly began to wane in the midst of a recession, but the UK's 1982 victory in the Falklands put her government in a positive light once more.

© Getty Images

Margaret Thatcher -

However, for most of her tenure, Thatcher remained one of the least popular post-war prime ministers, with an average approval rating of 40%. Thatcher's increasingly disagreeable attitude towards the public and her own party led to multiple challenges to her leadership, and after she lost an internal leadership contest, Thatcher resigned in 1990.

© Getty Images

Harold Macmillan -

The United Kingdom saw decades of Prime Ministers coming and going as scheduled without fuss before Thatcher's 1990 resignation. The last prime minister to resign before Thatcher was Harold Macmillan, who served as Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963.

© Getty Images

Harold Macmillan -

Macmillan, born in 1894, was a Conservative PM who served in World War I and rose through the ranks of British politics over the decades that followed. 

© Getty Images

Harold Macmillan -

Despite presiding through an age of affluence with low unemployment and healthy growth throughout the kingdom, MacMillan was thought by many to be out of touch and disconnected from his own government. Following the Profumo affair, which revolved around the revelation that Macmillan's own Secretary of War frequently saw a call-girl who was also close to a high-ranking Soviet military strategist, the public lost all trust in and respect for Macmillan's government, and he chose to resign in 1963. 

© Getty Images

Anthony Eden -

Born in Rushyford in 1897, Anthony Eden briefly served as the head of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 to 1957. 

© Getty Images

Anthony Eden -

As the successor of Winston Churchill and the first fully post-war prime minister, Eden started his tenure with widespread popularity due to his extensive military service. However, his popularity was quickly spoiled in no small part due to his apparent ignorance of domestic, economic, and diplomatic policy.

© Getty Images

Anthony Eden -

After just two years in office, Eden resigned following the Suez Crisis of 1956 during which he put the already-precarious balance of world politics in jeopardy when he began plans to assassinate Egyptian president Gamal Nasser after Nasser announced the privatization of the Suez Canal. His invasion and assassination plans were universally seen as idiotic, and Eden resigned in shame and in failing health on January 9, 1957.

© Getty Images

Winston Churchill -

Although a polarizing figure in the 21st century, Winston Churchill is still widely regarded as one of the greatest leaders in the modern history of the United Kingdom. 

© Getty Images

Winston Churchill -

Churchill became prime minister in 1940 and immediately began leading the United Kingdom through the fight against Hitler, forming a new national government and a revitalized war cabinet.

© Getty Images

Winston Churchill -

After the Allied victory in 1945, Churchill ceased to be Prime Minister but continued to be a leading world figure throughout the Cold War, and coined the term "iron curtain." Churchill served as prime minister again from 1951 until 1955, when he was forced to resign due to worsening health concerns.

© Getty Images

Neville Chamberlain -

Born March 18, 1869, in Birmingham, Neville Chamberlain was serving as Prime Minister as World War II broke out. After becoming Prime Minister in 1937, Chamberlain promptly stepped down from his position in 1940. 

© Getty Images

Neville Chamberlain -

While promising protection to Poland and Norway in the face of an increasingly aggressive Germany, Chamberlain has been widely criticized by his contemporaries and historians for doing very little to actually prepare the United Kingdom for that eventuality, and history has shown that both of those efforts of protection failed horrifically.

© Getty Images

Neville Chamberlain -

After these failures destroyed his faith in himself, not to mention the faith of both the Conservative and Labour parties, Chamberlain resigned in 1940 and was succeeded by Winston Churchill.

Sources: (BBC) (CNN) (Britannica)

See also: The careers of world leaders before politics

© Getty Images