The prime minister’s own party has reportedly turned on her, after a budget that threatened to tank the British economy
Liz Truss holds a press conference in the Downing Street Briefing Room in London, Britain, October 14, 2022 © AP / Daniel Leal
British Prime Minister Liz Truss has lost the support of her own party, whose members are now searching for ways to remove her from office, Politico reported on Friday. Truss is already the least popular PM in recent history, but ousting her may prove a challenge.
Her first month in office has been a tumultuous one. Inheriting an economy reeling from double-digit inflation and battered by a historic cost-of-living crisis following London’s sanctions on Moscow, Truss promised “growth, growth, growth,” but ended up crashing the British pound with a ‘mini-budget’ that doled out billions of pounds in tax cuts.
While Truss subsequently scrapped her tax plan and sacked Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, markets are still floundering, and Tory MPs told Politico that the damage has already been done. “It feels like the end,” one lawmaker who backed her leadership bid this summer told the news site, “I think she’ll be gone next week.”
Read more
Should Truss refuse to resign, MPs are reportedly looking to take matters into their own hands. One scheme being considered, Politico claimed, would involve changing party rules to allow Truss to be challenged, and for MPs to select a successor without a vote among party members – the mechanism by which Truss dispatched former chancellor Rishi Sunak to succeed Boris Johnson in September.
Another plan would see a majority of Tory MPs agree on a replacement, who would then be installed by a majority vote in the House of Commons, where the party has a 69-seat advantage. However, this would involve getting the whole party to agree on a candidate, and having the King sign off on the vote.
If Truss leaves office or is replaced by the end of the year, she will have been the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history. With a recent Observer poll putting her approval rating at a dismal -47, Truss is the least popular PM since the British outlet began polling in the 1990s.
The Labour Party, currently surging in opinion polls, has called for a general election. “Change in personnel at the top of the Tory party is not the change we need,” party leader Keir Starmer told The Guardian on Friday. “We need a change of government.”
