Embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced she would step down from office Thursday after just 44 days in office — making her the UK’s shortest-serving leader ever.

Truss’ tumultuous stint was ultimately brought down by a fiscal fiasco over her proposal to cut taxes on the wealthy while raising corporate taxes — which faced hostile opposition from her own Conservative Party and sent financial markets into a weeks-long slide.

The shunned leader has left office with a miserable 10% favorability rating among the British public, according to a recent YouGov poll. Her predecessor Boris Johnson, who resigned in disgrace in July, has an approval rating of 29%, the poll shows.

If her downward spiral continued, she could have been on track to match Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, who has a favorability rating of 4% among the British public, according to a previous YouGov poll.

Truss’ resignation takes hold in a week, which means lawmakers are scrambling to endorse candidates to replace her in an internal election. The shortlist of possible new leaders even includes Johnson, who is expected to revive his political life and stand in the contest to replace his successor, sources told The Times of London.

“I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected,” the 47-year-old said, a day after pledging to remain in office as “a fighter, not a quitter.”

Truss’ resolve started to collapse Wednesday after her senior minister Home Secretary Suella Braverman stepped down and a House of Commons vote on a controversial fracking proposal, endorsed by Truss but opposed by members of her party, descended into disarray.

Braverman resigned after using her personal email for government business but used the occasion to chastise her boss, citing “concerns about the direction of this government.”

“The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes,” she said in a dig at the party leader.

Truss’ brief tenure had already seen soaring mortgage rates, a plummeting pound and a chaotic bond market — set into motion by her plan to abandon a 45% tax rate on high-income earners. A proposal to cap energy bills would have cost taxpayers $116 billion.

The Bank of England stepped in to take emergency action to prop up the bond market last month and “restore orderly conditions” to protect pension funds and ward off inflation. The emergency debt-buying plan was suspended last week, sinking gilt yields.

Truss’ exile was also accelerated by last week’s firing of Treasury chief Kwasi Kwarteng following a September selloff that wiped hundreds of billions of dollars from British markets over concerns of their rash tax cut plan — which raised suspicion from investors and working-class party loyalists.

Truss and Kwarteng had fashioned their tax-cutting plan after 1980s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but support among investors and blue-collar party loyalists collapsed when the pair failed to explain how revenue lost by the cuts would be restored.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, also complained of Conservative whips using heavy-handed maneuvers to corral votes on the contentious measure to resume fracking for shale gas. The measure sought to overturn a 2019 ban in order to boost the UK’s energy sources as Russia’s Ukraine invasion had sent gas prices higher.

Chris Bryant of the Labour Party said he “saw members being physically manhandled … and being bullied” by the enforcers, charges that Conservatives denied.

The political crisis Truss left behind was also marked by the replacement of her Treasury chief and the resignation of her party’s discipline enforcer.

“Nobody has a route plan. It’s all sort of hand-to-hand fighting on a day-to-day basis,” Conservative lawmaker Simon Hoare told the BBC Thursday, saying Truss had a matter of hours to turn the situation around.

The flailing leader had replaced Johnson after he resigned over the summer following an ethics scandal that led 50 members of the government to quit in protest.

Jeremy Hunt, the nation’s new Treasury chief of three days, was seen as a top candidate to succeed Truss — but the twice-failed leadership candidate said Sunday he would not seek the top job again.

The veteran cabinet minister, seen as a centrist, had sought to calm investors and lawmakers this week as he announced plans to reverse Truss’ economic moves.

“I think having run two leadership campaigns — and by the way, failed in both of them — the desire to be leader has been clinically excised from me,” Hunt lamented.

Conservative Rishi Sunak, who finished second to Truss in this summer’s leadership race to replace Johnson, is now seen as a top contender to replace the divisive leader.

Sunak had warned of the economic consequences of Truss’ leadership plan during the race.

Suank’s profile had been elevated by Braverman’s replacement, former Cabinet minister Grant Shapps, who is a staunch high-profile supporter of the contender.

House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and popular Defense Secretary Ben Wallace also enjoyed support among lawmakers and were widely seen as possible replacements for Truss. Some have even speculated that Johnson could return to the fray and re-take the reigns of government.

Lawmakers now have to compress a usually laborious internal election process into a week to replace Truss. Members of the United Kingdom are not set to vote for prime minister until 2024.

Labour leader Keir Starmer called for an immediate general election shortly after Truss made her announcement, saying his party would offer the “stability, leadership and vision Britain needs.”

“After 12 years of Tory failure, the British people deserve much more than this revolving door of chaos,” he tweeted.

“The damage they have done will take years to fix.”

Truss had been welcomed into office by Queen Elizabeth II days before the monarch died last month.

Downing Street’s previous short stayer was George Canning, who died in office after serving 118 days as prime minister in 1827.

Truss said she would remain in power for at least a week until a new leader was chosen.
“I came into office at a time of great economic and international instability,” her resignation speech began.

“Families and businesses were worried about how to pay their bills, Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine threatens the security of our whole continent and our country has been held back for too long by low economic growth.

“I was elected by the Conservative Party with a mandate to change this. 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.

“I recognize, though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party. I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party.”

Truss was the third prime minister to resign in as many years. In 2019, Theresa May stepped down over her failure to negotiate a divorce from the European Union.

Whoever replaces the disgraced prime minister will be the second unelected head of state the UK has seen in just two months.