There is unpopular and then there is the kind of unpopularity that comes with the scalding brevity of a monarch’s whispered snub. A serving of the latter dished out to the new British prime minister could prove to dovetail with the widespread sentiment of the former to the extent that it could see her walking out 10 Downing Street for good within a matter of days. 

Visiting Buckingham Palace for her first weekly audience with King Charles III, Prime Minister Truss curtseyed for the new king  on Wednesday only to be greeted by a terse, “Back again?” This was followed by a faint but audible, “Dear oh dear.” 

The video of that unsettling exchange quickly made the social media rounds and underscored the intensely difficult week that Ms. Truss is having as fellow members of the Conservative party in parliament are now reportedly plotting her ouster. A Tory backbencher told the Times of London that the mood regarding the prime minister has turned “deadly.” That same MP noted that according to the leadership rules, Ms. Truss should be shielded from challenges for a year, but there is already talk among senior Tories of replacing her with a joint ticket of Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, each of whom lost out to Ms. Truss previously.

It is chiefly Ms. Truss’s economic policies, and botched attempts to push them through, that have seen her popularity plunge to possibly unprecedented depths. The Telegraph today reported that only 9 percent of the British public now have a favorable view of Ms. Truss, meaning it may already be impossible for her to claw her way back to any kind of respectable numbers. In the words of a British pollster who spoke to the Telegraph, Matthew Goodwin, the numbers “mean that Liz Truss is more unpopular than Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn ever were — she is basically in what I would call Prince Andrew territory.” 

Ms. Truss has previously tried to pin Britain’s economic woes and inflationary spiral on the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine. That hasn’t swayed the public, and neither has her quick-fix recipe for growth.

Mr. Goodwin explained that the problem facing the prime minister is that “she has pursued a course of public policy that most voters don’t agree with — they are not won over by the case for tax cuts driving economic growth,” and that is compounded by the idea “they don’t seem to think she is particularly competent, trustworthy, or likable.”

Ms. Truss’s performance at a closed-door meeting Wednesday night was criticized by lawmakers of  her own party. Afterward, though, Britain’s treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, rejected suggestions that the Conservatives would reverse course on the fiscal policies that have led to market upheaval and are apparently pushing Ms. Truss to the brink. The AP reported that Mr. Kwarteng ruled out a U-turn on the government’s economic growth plan despite investor concerns that $48 billion of unfunded tax cuts will push public borrowing in Britain to unsustainable levels and fuel inflation. 

“Our position hasn’t changed,” Mr. Kwarteng told the BBC in Washington, where he is attending the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting. “What I’m totally focused on is delivering on the mini-budget.”

Ms. Truss, for her part, might be wishing she had stayed in Prague, where she attended a European parley organized by the French president, Emmanuel Macron. 

Charles, of course, must remain neutral in British political matters. Some have already criticized the monarch for his comments to Mr. Truss, which may have breached royal protocol. One political commentator, Patrick O’Flynn, wrote on Twitter, “Bad mistake from King Charles to appear to be mocking his first PM on camera, no matter how inept he may think her. Elizabeth II didn’t breach protocol like that in 70 years.”

Could the king have simply been acknowledging the rough time Ms. Truss is undergoing? In any case, the gloves are now off at Westminster and Ms. Truss has directly in front of her the fight of her life.