George Canning was the shortest–serving British Prime Minister, and Viscount Goderich was the second shortest–serving, until the debacle that was Liz Truss's 49–day ministry in 2022. That's unless we count the Earl of Bath.
Canning served in various senior cabinet positions, under numerous prime ministers – including the Earl of Liverpool, who was the third longest–serving prime minister in British history (after Walpole and Pitt the Younger). Liverpool's ministry lasted from 1812 to 1827.
Lord Liverpool resigned in 1827 after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage. Canning was chosen to succeed him, taking office on 10 April 1827. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel both declined to serve under him, and the Tories split between the so–called Ultra–Tories (who supported Peel and Wellington) and the Canningites. Canning invited several Whigs to join his cabinet, but his health collapsed and he died on 8 August, after just 119 days in office. (This was 117 days more than the Earl of Bath.)
Canning's government of Tories and Whigs continued for a few months under Lord Goderich, but fell apart in early 1828. Goderich lasted only eleven days longer than Canning; his tenure was the second shortest of any British prime minister (until Truss). He was succeeded by the Duke of Wellington, whose government initially included some Canningites but soon became mostly 'High Tory' when many of the Canningites drifted over to the Whigs. Wellington's administration lasted little more than two years, before similarly going down in defeat.
Some historians have seen the revival of the Tories from the 1830s onwards, in the form of the Conservative Party, as the overcoming of the divisions of 1827. Canning has come to be regarded as a 'lost leader', with much speculation about what his legacy could have been had he lived.
© Haydn Thompson 2017–23