Liz Truss’s hopes of remaining in Downing Street have been dealt a severe blow after Conservative MPs went public with their demands for her resignation for the first time.
Senior Tory Crispin Blunt was the first MP to break cover and publicly call for Ms Truss to go, but a host of others openly questioned her ability to stay in post.
Tory grandee Sir Malcolm Rifkind told The Independent it was “in the national interest” for MPs to demand her resignation, while MP Andrew Bridgen also called for her to quit, saying: “We cannot carry on like this. Our country, its people and our party deserve better”.
Jamie Wallis, the Tory MP for Bridgend & Porthcawl, announced he had “written to the prime minister to ask her to stand down as she no longer holds the confidence of this country”.
The race to replace Ms Truss intensified as it emerged that allies of the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, have been canvassing support among MPs for a takeover.
The new 2019 intake of Tory MPs were also blamed for allowing the prime minister to cling to power amid accusations they were “rabbits in the headlights”, too terrified to make moves against her.
Behind the scenes, groups of Tory MPs and grandees are expected to meet this week to discuss ways of ousting Ms Truss from No 10.
MPs are also thought to have sent letters of no confidence in the prime minister to the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady. Technically, under party rules, Ms Truss has a year’s grace but the 1922 Committee threatened to change the same rules in 2019, effectively securing Theresa May’s departure from No 10.
The calls for Ms Truss to go came as an Opinium poll for the Trades Union Congress projected a 1997-style landslide victory for Labour, with the party winning 411 seats compared to the Conservatives’ 137.
The research, using the MRP method to estimate constituency-level result, suggested 10 current cabinet ministers and former PM Boris Johnson would lose their seats.
One senior Tory MP told The Independent: “She can’t lead us into the next election, everyone knows that, it is just whether she goes in the short term or the long term”.
Another said of the 2019 intake, who make up almost one-third of Tory MPs: “There are so many of them, it will take a move in the 2019-ers [to oust her]. But many of them are not there yet. They are terrified, they are like rabbits in the headlights.”
The moves to unseat Ms Truss come as she spent the day locked in crisis talks with her new chancellor Jeremy Hunt at Chequers in an attempt to restore economic credibility before markets reopen on Monday.
Mr Hunt has implored his party’s MPs not to eject her from No 10, warning that voters would not thank the party for further instability.
Days after she sacked her first choice as chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and announced a major U-turn on her flagship corporation tax cut, Mr Hunt insisted that her change in tack went deeper than policy and personnel.
“She’s listened, she has changed,” he told the BBC.
But within hours, Mr Blunt had told Channel 4's Andrew Neil Show that the prime minister should go.
“I think the game is up and it’s now a question as to how the succession is managed,” he said.
He also called for her to be replaced by a leadership team that encompassed Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Mr Hunt.
Asked how his party would get rid of her, he said: “Exactly how it is done and exactly under what mechanism [remains unclear] ... but it will happen.”
Mr Rifkind, who was foreign secretary under Margaret Thatcher, told The Independent that Tory MPs needed to make up their minds on the leadership, and fast.
“Conservative MPs must decide either to support Truss or demand her resignation. I think the latter would be in the national interest. Once a new PM is chosen, he or she must get the economy back on an even keel.”
Another senior Tory MP, former minister Mark Garnier, said Ms Truss was “in office but not in power”.
And former chief whip Andrew Mitchell, an ally of Mr Hunt, told the BBC’s World This Weekend: “We’ve got to see what happens in the next few days. If she cannot do the job … I’m afraid that she will go.”
Asked if she can stay in No 10, Alicia Kearns, the new chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, told Times Radio: “It's difficult”.
Earlier on Sunday, another Conservative MP Robert Halfon stopped short of calling on her to quit but in a dramatic attack on his own government, he accused Ms Truss of looking like a “libertarian jihadist” who “treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free-market experiments”.
He demanded an apology and a “dramatic reset” in the next few days.
The prime minister has also faced calls for a reshuffle, just days after she sacked her chancellor in a bid to save her premiership.
Ms Truss has come under fire for sacking ministers who backed her opponent Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership contest.
Former health secretary Matt Hancock led the calls for a reshuffle, saying Ms Truss had to bring the breadth of the Conservative party “into her government”.
