Summary
• A Conservative former minister has said the “game is up” for the prime minister, Liz Truss. Crispin Blunt – who became the first Tory MP to publicly call for her to go – said he does not think she can survive the current crisis and “it’s now a question as to how the succession is managed”.
Blunt, who is the Conservative MP for Reigate and was a justice minister in the early years of David Cameron’s premiership, backed Jeremy Hunt in the summer Tory leadership contest.
Another Tory MP, Robert Halfon, was also scathing of the Truss government on Sunday, telling Sky News: “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”.
• Jeremy Hunt has insisted that Liz Truss is in charge despite her premiership looking increasingly in peril, as he warned of further public spending cuts and failed to rule out more U-turns on her disastrous mini-budget.
The new chancellor, now widely seen as the most powerful man in government since he took over from the sacked Kwasi Kwarteng, has buried a series of flagship policies that brought Truss to power.
“The prime minister is in charge,” he told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, even though her authority has been seriously undermined by her decision to allow him to tear up her economic agenda in a bid to calm the markets and mutinous Tory MPs.
• Senior Conservatives will this week hold talks on a “rescue mission” that would see the swift removal of Liz Truss as leader, after the new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, dramatically tore up her economic package and signalled a new era of austerity.
A group of senior MPs will meet on Monday to discuss the prime minister’s future, with some wanting her to resign within days and others saying she is now “in office but not in control”. Some are threatening to publicly call on Truss to stand down after the implosion of her tax-cutting programme.
In a rearguard action to prop up the prime minister, her cabinet allies have warned MPs they would precipitate an election and ensure the Tories were “finished as a party” if they toppled a second leader in just a few months.
• Senior Conservatives have welcomed Hunt’s arrival as chancellor, saying he had effectively “taken over” running the government from Liz Truss after he unceremoniously dumped her tax-cutting agenda on his first day in office.
One senior Conservative MP said it was a huge relief to have someone in charge at the Treasury who was able to admit to recent mistakes and had made it his mission to restore the government’s credibility with the markets.
They added: “It is just so good to have a grownup in the room, someone who commands respect and who has experience after this period of utter madness.”
Updated
Rishi Sunak is being talked up by MPs as the best solution for their party’s crisis, given he would be well placed to win back market confidence. “He is the only candidate who would save people 1% on their mortgages,” says a senior Tory. “That’s worth a lot right now.”
Yet Boris Johnson loyalists will fight efforts to install Sunak, given many still blame him for Johnson’s downfall. Look how Nadine Dorries has warned that changing leader again would mean a general election.
It’s the fear of a general election that is focusing minds. Few believe the party will win a fifth term – whoever leads them. Instead, the aim is to limit losses; to make sure the party’s defeat is not one that puts it out of power for a generation or more.
And while it remains very unlikely that Tory MPs would vote for an election, there is a worry that the public mood could turn towards one unless things stabilise. A Tory strategist warns that the window is narrowing when it comes to the public mood: “There is a risk the public see the turmoil and turn in favour of one.”
“The more chaotic and mad it is, the more likely we head to election territory,” says a party old hand. “This is why something has to happen soon.”
