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George Canning (11 April 1770 – 8 August 1827) [[SelfMadeMan was born to a comparatively impoverished family and limited financial resources and managed to become Prime Minister for the Tory party, a party filled with the richest men of the time.]]

For 119 days.

Then he died.

He first entered politics under the mentoring of UsefulNotes/WilliamPittTheYounger. Canning became an MP in a rotten borough (a borough with so few voters that it was easy to bribe them all) in Pitt's government.

Canning's bit was a great personal charisma and writing skill. This caused him to skyrocket though the party because, well, they were very short on orators, and he gave them a rhetorical power that they lacked. He also more or less invented public campaigning in the United Kingdom.

As a result of all this, he got himself a circle of followers but also managed to alienate many more, risking losing political allies for personal reasons. He fought a duel with UsefulNotes/LordCastlereagh after an argument about sending troops to Portugal, leading to a lifelong rivalry. He also once reduced UsefulNotes/LordLiverpool to tears with a long satirical poem mocking Liverpool's attachment to his time as a colonel in the militia. ''He then forced Liverpool to apologise for being upset.''

When Lord Liverpool died, King George IV chose Canning as prime minister, over the heads of UsefulNotes/TheDukeOfWellington and Sir UsefulNotes/RobertPeel. As such, neither of them was willing to serve under Canning in his cabinet, which would have been as much a problem for him as it had been for UsefulNotes/SpencerPerceval. As this led a large number of prominent Tories to shun appointments as well, this led him to appoint a number of Whigs to his government, as (1) parties weren't as concrete at the time, and (2) he came from a historically Whig family and so they were happier working with him than they would have been otherwise. Of course, he died and became the shortest-serving Prime Minister in British history (although he still managed almost four times longer than UsefulNotes/WilliamHenryHarrison), a record not broken until UsefulNotes/LizTruss nearly 200 years later.
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