“People don't respect her, they don't trust her, and the government is now effectively being run by a chancellor who is going against the very thing the prime minister stood on," Rainbow Murray, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, said on NPR's Morning Edition. Murray was referring to the formal name for the finance chief — the chancellor of the Exchequer, which is the U.K.'s Treasury.

Criticism and jokes about Truss abound

Her failure to show up at the House of Commons on Monday to answer an urgent question about firing Kwarteng drew sharp ridicule.