When it was announced that Penny Mordaunt had offered to stand in for Liz Truss in response to an urgent Commons question over the economic crisis on Monday, some Conservative MPs thought it was a joke.
“Why is she asking one of her biggest rivals for the job to take her place? She’ll totally show her up,” one said. It was hard to see the cabinet minister’s performance on Monday afternoon as anything other than an audition for the top job.
Mordaunt did little to dispel that impression as she landed punchy attacks on the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, roused the depressed Tory troops, and offered an apology to the country for the instability caused by the prime minister’s dramatic climbdown. Truss had done none of these things publicly, though probably should have done all of them.
Nevertheless, it was Truss’s refusal to show up and face MPs herself – despite unleashing chaos on the party, the economy and the country – that most riled MPs. Mordaunt repeatedly assured them there was a “genuine reason” why she was not there. In one particularly bizarre exchange, she insisted: “The prime minister is not under a desk.”
But where was she? Truss was, the Guardian revealed, holed up with Sir Graham Brady, the powerful chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, in her Commons office. Downing Street sources claimed it was a planned meeting, rather than a crisis talk, but conceded it was inevitable that her fragile position would have come up.
Truss’s decline from shiny new prime minister at optimum strength just 41 days ago to being in office but very much not in power has been a sorry story of misjudgments, blinding ideology, inexperience, humiliating climbdowns and lack of human connection. But the last 24 hours have underlined just how weak she is.
When they met at Chequers on Sunday lunchtime for a three-hour meeting, her new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt – now the most powerful man in government – was clear what Truss needed to do. If she wanted to avoid an economic crisis and restore any shred of Tory competence, Trussonomics had to be junked.
In the privacy of her grace-and-favour country mansion, with just their closest aides around them, Hunt went through line by line what was left of the mini-budget. The 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax would have to go, he told her, and the energy support package would have to be substantially scaled back.
“That was particularly painful for her,” one Downing Street insider said. “It was virtually her only attack line left against Labour and she had just deployed it at last week’s PMQs. This week’s is going to be very difficult.”
Hunt also convinced her that the climbdown should happen sooner, rather than later, to avoid market meltdown. Truss, devastated but determined to cling on, returned to Downing Street late on Sunday night. Just a few hours later, in the early hours of Monday morning, the Treasury confirmed that Hunt would make a statement.
By the time Downing Street staff arrived at work, Operation “Save Liz” was already in full force. Her closest political friend and deputy prime minister, Thérèse Coffey, was at her side as she mapped out to aides what would turn out to be one of the most difficult days of an already torrid premiership.
After they were joined in No 10 by Hunt, the trio led a virtual meeting of the cabinet at 10am to share the U-turn plans. Truss opened the session by reminding her top team the government had taken immediate action to address the cost of living crisis with a huge energy support package – and insisted she remained committed to the growth agenda.
Hunt then went through all the measures that were going to be dumped – but blamed the changes on the “worsening global economic situation, with interest rates rising around the world as monetary policy returns to a sense of normality”. There was little contrition.
The education secretary, Kit Malthouse, highlighted the global factors that had made life more difficult for Truss, but did not dwell on the role played by her own disastrous decisions. The Welsh secretary, Robert Buckland, called for payroll reforms. Only Kemi Badenoch, the trade secretary, raised the prospect of how the U-turn would go down. “She said we had to make sure it landed properly after last time,” one source said.
Less than an hour later, at 11am, Hunt made his televised statement, dropping bombshell after bombshell and leaving many Tory MPs wondering how Truss could survive. In the short term at least, the markets rallied, leaving ministers and government aides breathing a deep sigh of relief.
But Tory MPs were not happy. The former cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell told Times Radio that if it became apparent to Tory MPs that Truss was not up the job, a way would be found to get rid of her. “It means that if she cannot do the job, then she will be replaced.”
Angela Richardson became the fourth Tory MP to publicly state that Truss should go. “I just don’t think that it’s tenable that she can stay in her position any longer. And I’m very sad to have to say that,” she said. A few hours later, the veteran MP Charles Walker became the fifth. “If she doesn’t go right now, it will not be her decision,” he said.
Downing Street told reporters that the prime minister was not going anywhere, but the mood in the parliamentary party was darkening. There were rumours of Tory MPs being threatened with a general election if they did not back off.
Hunt held a hastily organised private briefing for Tory MPs in a bid to “calm the horses”. To a hushed crowd of ashen faces, he said the worst was yet to come – given that the U-turns on mini-budget measures would fill only about half of the expected £70bn fiscal black hole.
While several present said he urged colleagues to give Truss credit for blowing up her economic agenda and recognising their concerns, one dismissed it as “lip service”. After the nearly 90-minute briefing was over, another remained unconvinced, quipping: “It’s clear he’s running the show.”
But the question lingers of what is now the point of the prime minister. Her allies claimed that key parts of her growth plan – supply side reforms – are still to come. “If these things were easy and straightforward, somebody would have done them by now,” one said. “We need Liz to push them through.”
Not everybody in Downing Street agrees. “The mood is one of powerlessness,” one insider said. “There’s no control. We’re just managing hour by hour, but it feels like we’re lurching from crisis to crisis.”
When Truss finally did emerge after her meeting with Brady, it was to sit alongside the chancellor in the Commons as he confirmed the biggest climbdown in modern political history. Her face was fixed in a rictus smile as she listened to him bury her political project amid the jeers of Labour MPs and the relative silence of her own benches.
But if one of the aims for the massive volte-face was to save her premiership, it was far from clear it had been successful. One member of the 1922 executive, which has the power to change party rules or send in the “men in grey suits” to tell her the game is up, claimed she would not make it until the end of the week.
“I’m not sure this has bought her more time,” they said. “It’s just a terrible admission that her authority has gone. Something will happen this week. The mood is such that it demands action. When the herd moves, the herd moves.”
Despite everything, Truss is continuing her “outreach” with Tory MPs, determined to save her premiership, even though that looks virtually impossible. At 6pm she met the One Nation group of Tory MPs, where she admitted the government would need to “cut our cloth” according to the economic situation – and finally said sorry for the mistakes of the past few weeks.
Later, she was due to round off a gruelling day at an informal reception with “drinks and nibbles” with her cabinet, before starting the whole engagement process again on Tuesday. But as one despondent minister said: “She may have bought herself some time, but it’s equally possible that she may have not. It feels very volatile. We just don’t know.”
• This article was amended on 18 October 2022. An earlier version described Robert Buckland as the justice secretary, which was a previous role. He became the Welsh secretary in July.
