U.K.'s Liz Truss has a net approval rating of -61 percent: Poll

The Liz Truss era is off to quite the disquieting start.

According to a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll released Monday, the new U.K. Prime Minister has a net approval rating of just -61 percent, down 13 points from a similar poll last Thursday. Only 9 percent of respondents approve of her overall performance, while 70 percent disapprove. 

Truss is underwater even amongst her own party, with 67 percent of 2019 Conservative voters disapproving of her performance. "Among those who would vote Conservative now, her net approval is -15 percent," R&WS notes.

Meanwhile, Labor party leader Keir Starmer is seeing a bump in his net approval rating, which jumped three points from last Thursday to 8 percent, R&WS reports. Starmer also leads Truss "by 47 points on who would be the better prime minister at this moment — larger than any lead Starmer had held over [former Prime Minister Boris Johnson] before Johnson resigned."

Truss was named Conservative party leader and the next U.K. prime minister in early September, following an election in which she prevailed against former finance Rishi Sunak. She replaced the outgoing Johnson, who stepped down in the wake of numerous scandals, including the COVID-19 protocol-flaunting controversy known as "partygate." And though many expected the start of Truss' term to be turbulent, "few were prepared" for her policies to, after just six weeks, trigger a "financial crisis, emergency central bank intervention, multiple U-turns, and the firing of her Treasury chief," writes The Associated Press.