A senior MP has become the first Tory to publicly call on Liz Truss to resign as Prime Minister following another week of chaos in her government.
Crispin Blunt, MP for Reigate, said the "game is up" for the Tory party leader after she sacked Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor on Friday after his mini-budget led to turmoil on the financial markets.
He told the Channel 4's Andrew Neil Show that he does not think the Prime Minister can survive the current crisis.
"I think the game is up and it's now a question as to how the succession is managed," he said. Asked how the party will get rid of her, he said: "If there is such a weight of opinion in the parliamentary party that we have to have a change, then it will be effected.
"Exactly how it is done and exactly under what mechanism... but it will happen."
Blunt's comments come after new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt insisted Truss was still in charge of her government despite reports he is the most powerful in her government.
He told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that Truss remains "in charge" and insisted voters can still put their faith in her.
Hunt said: "She's listened. She's changed. She's been willing to do that most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack. What we're going to do is to show not just what we want but how we're going to get there."
Truss was meeting Hunt at Chequers on Sunday, as rumours continue to swirl of plots to oust the Prime Minister. Treasury minister Andrew Griffith, speaking on Times Radio, insisted that the Prime Minister has the "confidence of the Government".
But Tory MP Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons Education Committee, did little to quash reports of plotting during an appearance on Sky News, when he declined to deny that MPs are considering installing a new leader.
He said: "Of course, colleagues are unhappy with what is going on. We're all talking to see what can be done about it."
While he stopped short of calling for the Prime Minister to go just yet, he did launch an extraordinary attack on the Government and the guiding philosophy of the mini-budget.
Halfon added: "I worry that, over the past few weeks, 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. And this is not where the country is. There's been one horror story after another."
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