When Liz Truss ran for Prime Minister of the United Kingdom this summer, an ally predicted that her first weeks in office would be turbulent. Few, including Truss, were prepared for the magnitude of the sound and fury. In just six weeks, the prime minister’s libertarian economic policies have precipitated a financial crisis, an emergency central bank intervention, multiple U-turns, and the firing of her Treasury chief.

Truss is now facing a mutiny within the ruling Conservative Party, which threatens her leadership. On Sunday, Conservative lawmaker Robert Halfon lamented that the last few weeks had been “one horror story after another.” “The government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free-market experiments,” he told Sky News.

But according to a report by the Associated Press, this wasn’t completely unexpected. During the Conservative leadership election campaign, Truss described herself as a disruptor who would challenge economic “orthodoxy,” promising to cut taxes and cut red tape in order to boost Britain’s sluggish economy. Her opponent, former Treasury Secretary Rishi Sunak, argued that immediate tax cuts would be reckless in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

The 172,000 Conservative Party members, who are mostly older and wealthier, preferred Truss’ upbeat vision. On September 5, she was elected leader of the ruling party with 57% of the vote. The next day, Queen Elizabeth II appointed her as Prime Minister, in one of the monarch’s final acts before her death on September 8.

Truss’ first days in office were overshadowed by the queen’s state funeral. Then, on September 23, Treasury Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled the economic plan he and Truss had devised. It included 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in tax cuts, including a reduction in income tax for the highest earners,

but no assessment of how the government would pay for them. Truss was doing exactly what she and her allies had promised. Mark Littlewood, CEO of the Libertarian think tank, predicted “fireworks” this summer as the new prime minister pushed for economic reform at “absolutely breakneck speed.”