Liz Truss faces week to save job amid unrest in Tory party

Recent turmoil leaves British Prime Minister at whim of financial markets and support of her backbench MPs

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss at Downing Street on Friday. Bloomberg

British Prime Minister Liz Truss's fate could be sealed by the mood of markets when they open on Monday morning and her own backbench MPs, as she battles to save her post this week.

After Ms Truss appointed Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor and effectively ditched her economic agenda to restore credibility to her ailing administration, all eyes will be on the market reaction on Monday morning to see if she has done enough to reassure the City.

Even if she receives a positive result, those efforts could come to nothing this week if Tory MPs decide that a change of leader is required.

Three Conservative MPs broke ranks on Sunday to publicly tell Ms Truss that the “game is up”.

Crispin Blunt, MP for Reigate in Surrey, said he did not think she could survive the crisis and “it’s now a question as to how the succession is managed”.

Andrew Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, joined the call on Sunday evening, telling The Telegraph newspaper: “We cannot carry on like this.”

“Our country, its people and our party deserve better,” said Mr Bridgen, who backed Rishi Sunak in the summer leadership race.

Jamie Wallis, who represents Bridgend in Wales, also confirmed that he had written to Ms Truss, asking her to stand down.

Other senior figures within the parliamentary party expressed deep unease with her leadership but stopped short of calling for her to go.

Mr Blunt, who backed Jeremy Hunt in the leadership contest, on Sunday said that most of his colleagues “clearly understand that Prime Minister Truss’s authority is now fatally damaged”.

“She has to go now as she cannot win nor sustain the confidence of her colleagues, far less the public and a relentless media," he said.

“The principal emotional reactions to her public presentation is now a mixture of anger, contempt and pity.

“It’s a blinding glimpse of the obvious that this cannot and should not continue.”

Mr Blunt called for former leadership contenders Mr Sunak, Mr Hunt and Penny Mordaunt to come together and steer the party out of the current crisis.

Mr Wallis published the letter he sent to Ms Truss, which said that he did not think she could unite the divided party.

“Watching senior colleagues exploit the issue of transgender rights and weaponise it in order to score cheap political points was extremely unpleasant," said Mr Wallis, who came out as transgender this year.

“You chose not to challenge this behaviour and have now chosen to have those same colleagues sit alongside you in your government.”

Liz Truss's political career - in pictures

Earlier, Conservative former chief whip Andrew Mitchell, who backed Mr Hunt in the leadership contest, told BBC Radio 4: “The Conservative parliamentary party has always shown itself clear, and indeed ruthless, in making changes if required.

“If the prime minister proves unable to govern effectively she will have to stand down, and the parliamentary party will make that clear. And, indeed, the mechanism is not important. It’s that reality that would assert itself.

“But we should all be trying to help her to succeed and to get it right.”

Mr Hunt, widely regarded now as the most powerful man in government, insisted on Sunday that “the prime minister’s in charge”.

He also told the BBC that after two failed leadership bids, his desire for the top job has been “clinically excised”.

Mr Hunt at the weekend insisted that Ms Truss was still in charge even as he called for a tough package of tax increases and spending cuts to steady the UK economy.

It came at the end of another extraordinary weekend in British politics, during which even US President Joe Biden called Ms Truss’s economic vision a “mistake”.

With the backdrop of rumoured plots and plans to install the defeated Mr Sunak or Defence Secretary Ben Wallace as the new leader, Ms Truss met her Mr Hunt in Chequers to draw up a new budget for October 31.

Ms Mordaunt also offered the prime minister her full support, using a piece in The Telegraph to warn that the UK “needs stability, not a soap opera”.

She told colleagues that the “national mission” is clear but it “needs pragmatism and teamwork”.

“It needs us to work with the prime minister and her new Chancellor," Ms Mordaunt said. "It needs all of us.”

Alicia Kearns, Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton who recently became the chairwoman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, told Times Radio it was hard to say if Ms Truss should stay in the top job.

“Ultimately it is a very difficult one because I think, you know, we’ve had the questions around our moral competency," Ms Kearns said. "We’ve now got questions around our fiscal competency.

“I don’t want further questions around even our ability to continue to govern as a party and our ability to stay united.

"It’s an incredibly difficult one and, ultimately, I need to listen to colleagues and speak to colleagues over coming days.

“But do we need a fundamental reset? Without question.”

New UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt admits mistakes were made - video

The critical remarks come as another senior Conservative MP, Robert Halfon, said he wants an “apology and a fundamental reset”.

Mr Halfon, chairman of the Commons education committee and MP for Harlow, would not deny that MPs were considering another leader.

“We’re all talking to see what can be done about it,” he said.

“I worry that, over the past few weeks, the government has treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra-free market experiments

"And this is not where the country is. There’s been one horror story after another."

Mr Halfon said he was not calling on Ms Truss to go but told Times Radio the government needs a reset “pretty soon”, adding: “I can’t give you hours or days.”

Former health secretary Matt Hancock said the prime minister needed to reshuffle her Cabinet.

Speaking to the BBC about the prospect of a leadership contest, Mr Hancock said: “I don’t think we’re there yet."

B"She needs to do three things: deliver an economically credible plan, reshuffle her Cabinet and restore trust.

“She needs to bring the broad Conservative Party in her government. She needs a reshuffle."