British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigns

British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced on Thursday she was stepping down, just over six weeks after taking the Conservative Party reins as leader.

Truss's short tenure was marked by shock over the government's mini-budget, which roiled British markets, and internal party dissension leading to cabinet departures and backbenchers expressing a lack of confidence in their new leader.

Truss said that, "given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party."

Another Conservative leadership contest will take place within a week, Truss said in a short statement outside the prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. She will stay on until then.

It will be the fourth such contest for the party since David Cameron stepped down in the wake of a referendum that saw British voters support an exit from the European Union.

The development came just a day after Truss expressed her desire to stay on after apologizing for the tumultuous start to her leadership, saying she was "a fighter and not a quitter."

Kwasi Kwarteng, the government's finance minister, resigned last week after his so-called mini-budget announcement of Sept. 23 roiled the markets for its level of government borrowing during a time of economic uncertainty. It also angered opposition parties for its tax breaks for the very wealthiest.

Jeremy Hunt replaced Kwarteng and on Monday pledged to scrap most of that mini-budget, which originally had Truss's full-throated support.

Interior minister Suella Braverman left cabinet Wednesday after a rules breach, but in her departing letter expressed "concerns about the direction of this government."

"The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes," Braverman wrote.

An effort by Truss supporters to shore up her standing ahead of a fracking vote on Wednesday was seen by some MPs as heavy-handed and exacerbated the government's crisis, some MPs said.

Conservative lawmaker Charles Walker told the BBC it was "a shambles and a disgrace."

"I hope that all those people that put Liz Truss [in office], I hope it was worth it," he told the BBC. "I hope it was worth it to sit around the cabinet table, because the damage they have done to our party is extraordinary."

The party has also taken a drubbing in the press. Newspapers that usually support the Conservatives were vitriolic. An editorial in the Daily Mail was headlined, "The wheels have come off the Tory clown car."