Liz Truss has only been Prime Minister for 41 days, but she is already fighting for her political survival.
Tory plotters are looking at how they can oust her over economic turmoil, which would make her Britain’s shortest serving PM in history.
The current record-holder, George Canning, was in office for just 119 days before dying from tuberculosis in 1827.
Her ultra-short tenure makes it difficult to oust her politically. One Tory said: “She's crackers but it would be crackers to defenestrate another one so quickly.”
As of Monday at 10am only three MPs, Crispin Blunt, Andrew Bridgen and Jamie Wallis, had gone public with calls for her resignation.
It also makes it difficult in practical terms, because - technically - there is a ban on MPs ousting Ms Truss until a year has passed.
The word ‘technically’ is doing a lot of work there though. If MPs decide to put pressure on Ms Truss or try to change the rules, it could be curtains.
So how does the process for removing her work? We look at the details.
Will Liz Truss be removed as Prime Minister?
All signs politically are that she will - the question is when.
She has been left wounded by having to undo her flagship mini-Budget and put Jeremy Hunt, a very different Tory to her, in as her Chancellor.
He’s now announcing things rather than her. Tory Sir Roger Gale said: “I think Jeremy Hunt is de facto Prime Minister at the moment.”
The PM as addressing Cabinet ministers and One Nation Tories tonight - as Rishi Sunak backers reportedly have a dinner together to plot.
But nobody yet knows when MPs might try to remove Liz Truss as the warring factions have not yet organised into one coherent movement.
Will it be days? Will they wait weeks until after the October 31 financial statement? Or longer?
What are the Conservative rules for a vote of no confidence?
The 1922 Committee of backbench MPs runs the rules of leadership contest.
Normally 15% of Tory MPs - 54 - have to submit letters of no confidence to chairman Sir Graham Brady for a vote to be held.
MPs' letters are held on file by Sir Graham, unless they are withdrawn, and he keeps a secret running tally of the number.
Once a challenge was triggered, at least 50% of Tory MPs would then vote have to vote "no confidence" for a PM to lose and spark a full leadership contest.
But a Prime Minister is safe from this “letter” trigger for their first year in office. That technically gives Liz Truss until September 2023.
How could Liz Truss be removed within the current rules?
She can’t unless she resigns of her own accord. But the rules could be changed, and even the threat of this has been enough to see off previous PMs.
Theresa May and Boris Johnson both won no-confidence votes from their own MPs, only to have to resign months later when they lost confidence of their party.
One option could be to dramatically shorten the one-year waiting period before a Prime Minister can face a no confidence vote.
But even this would be a tall order, because under previous PMs the chatter was about shortening it to six months - not 41 days.
If the time period was shortened, there’s speculation Sir Graham would raise the threshold of letters needed for the vote from 15% to a higher number.
An ex-minister told us: “There’s been a lot of talk about rules and the fact that it’s very difficult to see a way forward.”
All these details of the rules might not matter in the end, though.
What’s more important is the weight and volume of political pressure - which could make her resign of her own accord.
What would happen if she's ousted?
Under the current rules, if Liz Truss resigned there would be a fresh Tory leadership contest.
MPs would whittle down the candidates to two, and the Conservative membership of 172,000 would then choose between the two of them.
But rebel MPs (many of them Rishi Sunak backers) want to change this because they feel like they can no longer trust the members to choose the right person.
Tory Sir Roger Gale said the “last thing” he wants is another leadership election and “there would have to be, I think, a coronation”.
An ex-minister said “the question has been raised" about a "consensus candidate" - with some reports suggesting Rishi Sunak or Penny Mordaunt.
“It goes back to the process of election, in which four consecutive ballots of MPs chose a different leader than the one the party ended up with.”
A coronation could be achieved if, for example, the 1922 Committee massively hikes up the threshold of MP supporters for getting on a leadership ballot.
Yet are two huge problems with this - first of all, there is no agreed consensus candidate yet that most Tory MPs would rally round.
Secondly, it’s massively undemocratic. Already, Liz Truss was elected by just 0.12% of the UK population and has junked vows that got the Tories in power in 2019.
No party since the Second World War has changed the Prime Minister twice without going to an election.
When will there be a general election?
Currently Liz Truss (or whoever else becomes Prime Minister) can call a general election as late as January 2025. In reality it’s expected in 2024.
If Ms Truss is forced out, calls will grow quickly for an election to let the country decide on the way out of the economic chaos.
Calling an election is entirely in the PM’s control and with Labour more than 20 points ahead in the polls, only a brave or suicidal Tory leader would call one.
Like forcing out Liz Truss, it would only happen if the political pressure was too great.
But it has to be even greater than the pressure for her to leave, because Conservative MPs will change a leader but are afraid of being unseated in an election.
About 40 would have to vote no confidence in their own government to bring it down - in normal times, it would be impressive if even one MP did this.
So we don’t know what will happen - the answer is very much ‘wait and see’.
