Liz Truss is a “dead woman walking” who will not survive until Christmas unless she ditches her plan to hand tax cuts to the rich, a former Cabinet minister warned last night.
In an extraordinary attack, the senior figure urged the Prime Minister to not unpack her boxes in No10 as she will be booted out within weeks.
The PM’s first Tory conference as leader got off to a disastrous start yesterday as she was mauled by her own party over her botched handling of the economy.
In an awkward television interview, Ms Truss eight times refused to say if she is preparing to slash benefits and spending on public services, such as hospitals and schools.
And she was accused of throwing her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng under the bus, as she blamed him for the £10,000-a-year Tory tax cut for Britain’s 660,000 highest earners.
A former Cabinet minister last night said they were “ashamed that we have a party that is having tax cuts for people at the top end, which are going to be funded by cuts in benefits”.
“She should have the good sense to realise she has lost all credibility and cannot do anything to recover,” they told the Mirror. “She is a dead woman walking.
“The idea that Tory MPs in the Red Wall will stick with Liz who is guaranteed to lose their seats is not feasible. They will do something to get rid of her.
“We cannot hobble along like this for the next 18 months. There will be a trigger point.
“The advice I would give her is ‘don’t unpack the boxes the removal men have delivered to No 10 as you might need to be taking them out again very soon.’
The senior figure said Tory MPs would re-write the party’s rules so Ms Truss can be ousted within her first year in office.
“If she does not say ‘I am terribly sorry this was a mistake’ or throw Kwasi to the wolves, she is fatally damaged. If she carries on in this way she will be gone before Christmas,” they continued.
Michael Gove, another former Cabinet minister, said he was "profoundly" concerned about the tax cuts, which he suggested he could vote against.
In her interview on the BBC ’s Laura Kuennsberg programme yesterday, Ms Truss acknowledged she had made mistakes in the preparations for the mini-Budget.
"I do accept we should have laid the ground better... I have learnt from that and I will make sure that in future we do a better job of laying the ground,” the PM said.
But Mr Gove who was in the same television studio as Ms Truss said she displayed an "inadequate realisation" of the scale of the problem.
He said cutting the 45p top rate of income tax for the highest earners was a "display of the wrong values".
When pressed if he could vote against the mini-Budget, the former minister replied: “I don't believe it's right”.
At a separate event later, Mr Gove added: "It's going to be very, very, very difficult to argue that it’s right to reduce welfare when we're also reducing taxes for the wealthiest."
More than a dozen Tory MPs have now publicly criticised the tax cut for the richest. Backbencher James Cartlidge said: “Cutting tax for top earners whilst reducing benefits in a cost of living crisis is unacceptable.”
Fellow Tory Steve Brine described the cut as “tin-eared and extremely politically naive”, Richard Graham said it should be pushed “into the long grass”, while Martin Vickers said it was a “political own goal”.
Former chief whip Julian Smith added: "We cannot clap for carers one month and cut tax for millionaires months later."
But Tory chairman Jake Berry last night attempted to quell the rebellion as he warned that MPs who rebelled in a Commons vote on the plans would be kicked out of the party.
In a further row, former culture secretary Nadine Dorries accused Ms Truss of throwing Mr Kwarteng "under a bus" by saying the decision to cut income tax for the richest was made by the Chancellor and not Cabinet.
Asked if the policy had been approved by ministers, the PM told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme: "No, no, we didn't. It was a decision the Chancellor made”.
Mrs Dorries responded by tweeting that "one of" Boris Johnson's "faults was that he could sometimes be too loyal".
"However, there is a balance and throwing your Chancellor under a bus on the first day of conference really isn't it," she said.
