"I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s gone by Wednesday," said a friend of Britain's Prime Minister Liz Truss. Photo / AP
"I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s gone by Wednesday," said a friend of Britain's Prime Minister Liz Truss. Photo / AP
Wings of party say junking prime minister’s entire platform leaves her without authority.
There were two prime ministerial performances in the House of Commons on Monday, but neither of them were delivered by Liz Truss.
The first, by House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, reminded Tories of what it isto have a leader who can command the chamber. When she assured MPs that the prime minister was not “hiding under a desk”, the Commons burst into laughter.
Backbench Tories tried to hold back their grins, all too aware that it was their own government being humiliated. The assured performance by Mordaunt, who was standing in for Truss on an urgent question about why the previous chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng had been sacked, gave Tories a hint of what might lie ahead if Truss is forced out.
One backbencher said: “It was nice to see someone for once at the despatch box who knows how to communicate.”
Throughout, the prime minister was nowhere to be seen; her absence unexplained amid rumours swirling that she may be set to resign. “I don’t think there has been a coup,” Mordaunt said, to further laughter.
Instead, it transpired she was in a private meeting with Sir Graham Brady, head of the 1922 committee of backbench Conservative MPs. Downing Street insiders insisted it was “pre-planned” catch up.
The second performance of the day came from Jeremy Hunt, the new chancellor, who ripped up the final pieces of Truss’ economic strategy and warned MPs that there was more pain to come. Truss did turn up to hear Hunt, but she sat expressionless and left as soon as he was finished.
There was a sense across several wings of the party that Truss’s time in Downing Street was running out. One cabinet minister said, “this is not sustainable”.
When Tory MPs returned to Westminster on Monday, few could see a route for her survival beyond the next few weeks. “Even if we get through this immediate mess, how is she going to be able to do anything?” asked one veteran backbencher.
A friend of Truss summed up her plight: “[She] stood on a platform, the platform has been kicked away, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s gone by Wednesday.”
New chancellor Jeremy Hunt finished eighth in this summer’s Tory leadership contest and now finds himself in a powerful position. Photo / AP
Sir Charles Walker became the fifth Tory MP to publicly call on Truss to go. “I don’t think her position is recoverable,” he told Sky News on Monday, describing the situation as “a monumental foul-up”. He added, “if you read the mood of the parliamentary party, she has lost authority”.
George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, has nicknamed Truss “PINO”, or “prime minister in name only”.
Hunt is now widely seen as the chief executive of the government, leaving Truss as a powerless figurehead at the mercy of her colleagues. Some MPs speculated that the prime minister may be embarrassed enough by Hunt’s decision to scrap nearly all of the disastrous mini-Budget to quit after the disintegration of her raison d’être.
“How can she not resign when her entire argument for the future of the country has been totally shredded?” asked one senior Tory. Another, who backed Truss for the leadership, said: “It would be mad if she doesn’t go.”
Hunt, who finished eighth in this summer’s Tory leadership contest with the support of just 18 MPs, now finds himself in a powerful position rewriting Truss’s economic plan. He clearly feels the market, not Truss, is his real boss.
“Nothing is off the table,” he said in his statement on Monday morning.
Only last Friday Truss’s allies were insisting that Hunt would stick to the government’s now-decimated “plan for growth” with no further U-turns and that he did not start with “a blank sheet of paper”. Hunt does not seem to have received the memo.
But despite Truss’s weak position, there is little consensus among Tory MPs on when and how she could be removed or who would replace her.
Her opponents hope that if more than 100 letters of no confidence in the prime minister are submitted by Tory MPs, Brady and the 1922 committee will be forced to act and change the rules to allow a vote on her position. “If there is a vote, she will barely scrape double digits,” one MP predicted.
There are Conservative MPs who believe the party should hold back from toppling Truss. “It would only create more instability, just as we’ve just about managed to calm the markets,” said one. But most believe she cannot lead the party into the next election.
Some MPs are eager to have a curtailed leadership contest that does not involve Tory party members, although their role in choosing the leader is written in the party’s constitution. One option being discussed, according to a person involved, is a “very high threshold” to ensure few candidates make it on the ballot paper.
Even if Truss is removed, few believe there can be a “coronation” to install a new Tory leader immediately. “There’s no chance at all it won’t spill into a full contest,” said one veteran party official.
But restricting the voting in any leadership race to MPs, rather than party members, is likely to face a backlash. One former cabinet minister said, “there is no way the voluntary party can be shut out” from a contest. “It would be legally challenged. The best we can hope for is to wrap the process up in 10 days or less.”
Instead, senior Tories believe their best hope would be to have a contest that lasts a couple of weeks. “We can do the MPs shortlisting in a week and then have the voluntary party element in 10 days,” one MP said.
Meanwhile, allies of former chancellor Rishi Sunak, including Commons Treasury select committee chair Mel Stride and former City minister John Glen, have urged their supporters to keep a low profile.
Truss’s greatest threat is that much of the campaigning to succeed her has already begun. “It was over yesterday and it’s even more over today,” said one minister.
