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‘The game is up,’ senior Tory rebel says
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Tory MP Jamie Wallis is the third rebel publicly calling for Liz Truss to resign.
The Bridgend and Porthcawl MP said he has written to the prime minister urging her to step down.
Wallis criticised “very basic and avoidable errors” in the prime minister’s approach in a letter to Liz Truss shared on Twitter, adding “enough is enough.”
“I have watched as the Government has undermined Britain’s economic credibility and fractured our Party irreparably. I have written to the Prime Minister to ask her to stand down as she no longer holds the confidence of this country,” Mr Wallis said
It comes after Andrew Bridgen and senior Tory MP Crispin Blunt also called for the prime minister to go heaping more pressure on Liz Truss.
“We cannot carry on like this. Our country, its people and our party deserve better,” the North West Leicestershire MP told The Daily Telegraph.
Senior Conservative Alicia Kearns said the question of whether Liz Truss should continue as prime minister is “incredibly difficult”.
Asked on Times Radio if Ms Truss could or should survive in Number 10, Ms Kearns, the new chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, sighed and said: “Ultimately it is a very difficult one because I think you know we’ve had the questions around our moral competency. We’ve now got questions around our fiscal competency.
“I don’t want further questions around even our ability to continue to govern as a party and our ability to stay united. It’s an incredibly difficult one, and ultimately I need to listen to colleagues and speak to colleagues over coming days.
“But do we need a fundamental reset? Without question.”
Joe Biden has described Liz Truss’s newly abandoned tax cuts as a “mistake,” in a rare criticism of the British prime minister.
The US president said it was “predictable” that his UK counterpart had been forced to abandon her economic plans after they caused turmoil in global financial markets.
In a bid to cling on to power, Ms Truss on Friday sacked her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng in the wake of his mini-Budget, which outlined aggressive tax cuts without identifying any cost savings.
“I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake,” Mr Biden said of the tax cuts. “The idea of cutting taxes on the super wealthy … I disagreed with the policy, but that’s up to Great Britain to make that judgment, not me.”
Read more below:
US president’s comments, a rare criticism of British domestic policy, come as PM fights to save her career
The SNP said it was “vital” that more Tory MPs call for Liz Truss to go.
The party’s Westminster deputy leader Kirsten Oswald said: “The game is up – Liz Truss has to go.
“The prime minister has driven the UK to the brink of a recession, and left the housing market on the verge of crashing – all within weeks of taking office.
“Sacking her incompetent Chancellor won’t cut it – Liz Truss must walk or be removed from office.
“It is now vital that more Tory MPs – and Tory MSPs in Scotland – call for her resignation and bring this shambolic premiership to an end.”
Jeremy Hunt once observed that David Cameron and George Osborne had a certain “genius” that allowed them to sell austerity cuts to the British public “without poll tax [-style] riots,” Kate Devlin writes.
This weekend it was Mr Hunt’s turn to try the hard sell. In a series of extraordinary interviews on his first full day as chancellor, he tried to level with the British public.
Ahead lie spending cuts, “difficult decisions” and tough economic choices, he cautioned. Just weeks after the prime minister promised tax cuts to win the keys to No 10, he said “some” taxes would rise.
And he refused to commit to a series of other key Truss pledges – including the 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax and raising the defence budget.
Read the full story here.
Goldman Sachs analysts have downgraded Britain’s economic outlook after Prime Minister Liz Truss removed Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor and reversed a freeze in corporation tax, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.
“Folding in weaker growth momentum, significantly tighter financial conditions, and the higher corporation tax from next April, we downgrade our UK growth outlook further and now expect a more significant recession,” Bloomberg cited the investment bank’s report as saying.
Goldman revised its 2023 UK economic output forecast to a 1 per cent contraction from an earlier forecast for a 0.4% output drop, with core inflation seen at 3.1 per cent at the end of 2023, down from 3.3 per cent previously, Bloomberg said.
Liz Truss is facing calls for a cabinet reshuffle just days after she brutally sacked her chancellor in a bid to save her premiership.
The prime minister has faced furious criticism for firing ministers who backed her opponent Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership contest.
Former health secretary Matt Hancock led calls for a reshuffle on Sunday, saying Ms Truss had to bring the breadth of the Conservative Party “into her government”.
His comments came as Jeremy Hunt insisted that Ms Truss had “changed” and listened to criticism following the party’s disastrous mini-Budget as he urged Conservative MPs not to oust her from office.
The new chancellor, who on Saturday took the axe to her economic strategy by confirming tax rises and public spending cuts were likely, warned that voters would not reward the party for further instability.
Read more below from our Whitehall correspondent, Kate Devlin:
Jeremy Hunt urges Tory MPs not to oust ‘changed’ PM
Liz Truss will likely be gone by Christmas, George Osborne said tonight as rebel MPs increased the pressure on the prime minister.
The former chancellor, who was critical of Ms Truss’s initial tax-cutting agenda, said “there will be a way” to remove her from Downing Street.
New Tory prime ministers currently enjoy a year of immunity from confidence votes under the party rulebook.
But speaking to the Andrew Neil Show, Mr Osborne said: “Both Boris Johnson and Theresa May were removed outside of the rules of the 1922 Committee. So I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about those rules.
“I think the 1922 Committee, or indeed a large number of MPs, can just force the issue. So water will find its way downhill.”
Tory MP Jamie Wallis is the third rebel publicly calling for Liz Truss to resign.
The Bridgend and Porthcawl MP said he has written to the prime minister demanding she down.
“Enough is enough,” Mr Wallis said.
“I have watched as the Government has undermined Britain’s economic credibility and fractured our Party irreparably. I have written to the Prime Minister to ask her to stand down as she no longer holds the confidence of this country.
Wallis criticised “very basic and avoidable errors” in the prime minister’s approach in a letter to Liz Truss shared on Twitter.
He added: “The leadership contest was particularly difficult for me. Watching senior colleagues exploit the issue of transgender rights and weaponise it in order to score cheap political points was extremely unpleasant.
“But observing the hostile nature of the debate and then witnessing increased hostility towards transgender people on social media and in-person was distressing. However, you chose not to challenge this behaviour and have now chosen to have those same colleagues sit alongside you in your government.”
The MP for North West Leicestershire, who supported Rishi Sunak’s leadership campaign, also savaged Ms Truss in a blog post earlier today, writing: “Liz has sunk her own leadership and her predecessor’s potential comeback at the same time, all in record time.
“Beleaguered Liz Truss has now run out of friends. She only ever had the support of a third of the elected MPs. We should expect more fireworks in Parliament this week. Unless this is resolved quickly, we are heading for a general election.”
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There are questions over Liz Truss’s leadership following the disastrous mini-budget (PA)
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