UK PM Truss quits after 6 tumultuous weeks
Newslooks- LONDON (AP)
British Prime Minister Liz Truss has resigned — bowing to the inevitable after a tumultuous six-week term in which her policies triggered turmoil in financial markets and a rebellion in her party obliterated her authority. She said “I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected.” Just a day earlier Truss had vowed to stay in power, saying she was “a fighter and not a quitter.” But Truss left Thursday after she was forced to abandon many of her economic policies and lost control of Conservative Party discipline.
Her departure leaves a divided party seeking a leader who can unify its warring factions.
15 UK Tory MPs call on PM Liz Truss to resign
U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss was hanging on to power by a thread on Thursday, 15 of Tory MPs call on Truss to resign and she was warned by one of her own MPs that she has “12 hours to save her job” – amid a claim that some Tory MPs “went to bed crying” following chaos in the voting lobby which saw them “manhandled” by senior colleagues. Truss in a volatile weeks, after a senior minister quit her government with a barrage of criticism and a vote in the House of Commons descended into chaos and acrimony.
Truss held a hastily arranged meeting in her 10 Downing St. office with Graham Brady, a senior Conservative lawmaker who oversees leadership challenges. Brady is tasked with assessing whether the prime minister still has the support of Tory members of Parliament.
The prime minister’s spokesman said Truss intended to remain in office. But a growing number of Conservative members of Parliament called Thursday for her to step down and end the chaos.
A botched economic plan unveiled by the government last month triggered financial turmoil and a political crisis that has seen the replacement of Truss’ Treasury chief, multiple policy U-turns and a breakdown of discipline in the governing Conservative Party.
Many Conservatives say Truss must resign – but she has remained defiant, saying she is “a fighter and not a quitter.”
Conservative lawmaker Simon Hoare said the government was in disarray. “Nobody has a route plan. It’s all sort of hand-to-hand fighting on a day-to-day basis,” he told the BBC on Thursday. He said Truss had “about 12 hours” to turn the situation around.
Mr Blunt, a justice minister in the early years of David Cameron’s premiership, told veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil that Ms Truss should go “now” as “the game is up” after just six weeks. Describing the “shocking few weeks” for the party, Mr Blunt told Mr Neil’s programme on Channel 4: “I would be very, very surprised if there are people dying in a ditch to keep Liz Truss as our prime minister.”
Andrew Bridgen
Mr Bridgen, who supported Ms Truss’s rival Rishi Sunak in the leadership campaign over the summer, announced his position in a scathing blog post which declared that Ms Truss had “run out of friends”. “Liz has sunk her own leadership and her predecessor’s potential comeback at the same time, all in record time,” he wrote.
“It’s time for the prime minister to go,” said lawmaker Miriam Cates. Another, Steve Double, said: “She isn’t up to the job, sadly.”
Newspapers that usually support the Conservatives were vitriolic. An editorial in the Daily Mail was headlined: “The wheels have come off the Tory clown car.”
International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, sent onto the airwaves Thursday morning to defend the government, insisted the administration was providing “stability.” But she was unable to guarantee Truss would lead the party into the next election.
“At the moment, I think that’s the case,” she said.
Angela Richardson
Ms Richardson, who was also elected in 2019, said Ms Truss should resign and then a truncated leadership election should get under way “very quickly”.
With opinion polls giving the Labour Party a large and growing lead, many Conservatives now believe their only hope of avoiding electoral oblivion is to replace Truss. But they are divided about how to get rid of her, and over who should replace her.
William Wragg
Speaking during an opposition day debate on the economy, the vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs explained that he was extremely displeased with the mini-budget and the current administration’s approach to the economy.
“I can’t go and speak to my constituents, looked them in the eye and say they should vote for our great party,” he said.
Johnny Mercer
And he called for Ms Truss to go on 19 October as he supported Sir Charles, saying he was “livid” about the whole situation.
Mr Mercer retweeted a clip of that viral video interview and said: “F*** me, he’s nailed it. Every word.”
The day before, an interview with Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alistair Campbell for Men’s Health was released in which he said Ms Truss laughed as she sacked him.
He said his removal was “like a gut punch” that sent him into a depression as she reneged on her promise to not downgrade the role of minister for veterans’ affairs.
Maria Caulfield
Ms Caulfield started by criticising the plan to scrap the 45p tax rate, saying she could not support it “when nurses are struggling to pay their bills”.
She then made clear she would not support ending the pensions triple lock after reports the government was looking into it, tweeting: “Pensioners should not be paying the price for the cost of living crisis whether caused by the war in Ukraine or mini budgets.”
But it wasn’t until last night that she joined the calls for the PM to go. Like Mr Mercer, she retweeted the video of Sir Charles, adding the line: “Tonight we are all Charles Walker.”
Steve Double
But it wasn’t until Thursday morning that he solidified his position and began a run of Tory MPs speaking out against the PM.
He told BBC Radio Cornwall she should resign, adding: “She’s not a fighter… I think she’s doing everything she can to hang on”.
Gary Streeter
The 10th Tory backbencher to call for Ms Truss to exit Downing Street was South West Devon MP Gary Streeter.
He used Twitter to outline his position, saying: “Sadly, it seems we must change leader.”
But Sir Gary had a message for other MPs too, adding: “Even if the angel Gabriel now takes over, the parliamentary party has to urgently rediscover discipline, mutual respect and teamwork if we are to (i) govern the UK well and (ii) avoid slaughter at the next election.”
He concluded with the hashtag #lastchance.
Sheryl Murray
She said she agreed with Sir Gary that she had “high hopes for Liz Truss” as leader.
But Ms Murray said after the chaos in the Commons over the fracking vote on Wednesday night, “her position has become untenable and I have submitted a letter to Sir Graham Brady”.
She later told Sky News that she put in her letter “with a very heavy heart”, but having “slept on it” and spoken to her local association, “we all came to the same conclusion unfortunately”.
Henry Smith
Next to call for the PM’s resignation was Crawley MP Henry Smith.
Speaking to Times Radio, he had harsh worlds for the government, saying: “We need new leadership…we need solid leadership.
“And I’m afraid I’m very sorry to say that has been distinctly lacking from Downing Street in the last several weeks.”
Miriam Cates
Speaking to the same radio station, education committee member, and the Penistone and Stocksbridge MP added her voice to the growing number calling for Ms Truss to quit.
She said the PM’s position “seems untenable” and it was “time for the prime minister to go”.
Ms Cates added: “The polls are really poor. If there was an election today, clearly, we would be decimated.
“Our priority right now has to be to govern in the national interest, not thinking about an election, whether that’s now or in two years, but to take control of this very, very difficult economic and social situation. And govern for the people.”
Matthew Offord
Hendon MP Matthew Offord became number 14 on Thursday morning in an interview with the Evening Standard.
He told the newspaper: “I can’t see the situation being sustainable.”
And he said Ms Truss needs to “sit down and discuss it with her cabinet and with others to manage some kind of dignified exit”.
Jill Mortimer
As lunchtime rolled around and Sir Graham Brady was inside Number 10 with the prime minister, Hartlepool MP Jill Mortimer posted her letter of no confidence in the PM on Facebook.She said the “deteriorating situation” left her with “no choice”. And in her letter, she said she was writing it “with deep regret”.
The party is keen to avoid another divisive leadership contest like the race a few months ago that saw Truss defeat ex-Treasury chief Rishi Sunak. Among potential replacements — if only Conservative lawmakers can agree — are Sunak, House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and newly appointed Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt.
A national election doesn’t have to be held until 2024, and under Conservative Party rules, Truss technically is safe from a leadership challenge for a year. The rules can be changed if enough lawmakers want it. There is fevered speculation about how many lawmakers have already submitted letters calling for a no-confidence vote.
In a major blow, Home Secretary Suella Braverman resigned Wednesday after breaching rules by sending an official document from her personal email account. She used her resignation letter to lambaste Truss, saying she had “concerns about the direction of this government.”
“The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes,” she said in a thinly veiled dig at Truss.
Braverman was replaced as home secretary, the minister responsible for immigration and law and order, by former Cabinet minister Grant Shapps, a high-profile supporter of her defeated rival Sunak.
Truss faced more turmoil in Parliament Wednesday evening on a vote over fracking for shale gas — a practice that Truss wants to resume despite opposition from many Conservatives.
With a large Conservative majority in Parliament, an opposition call for a fracking ban was easily defeated, but some lawmakers were furious that Conservative Party whips said the vote would be treated as a confidence motion, meaning the government would fall if the motion passed.
There were angry scenes in the House of Commons, with party whips accused of using heavy-handed tactics to gain votes. Labour lawmaker Chris Bryant said he “saw members being physically manhandled … and being bullied.” Conservative officials denied there had been manhandling.
Rumors swirled that Conservative Chief Whip Wendy Morton, who is responsible for party discipline, and her deputy had resigned. Hours later, Truss’ office said both remained in their jobs.
The dramatic developments came days after Truss fired her Treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday after the economic package the pair unveiled Sept. 23 spooked financial markets and triggered an economic and political crisis.
The plan’s 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in unfunded tax cuts sparked turmoil on financial markets, hammering the value of the pound and increasing the cost of U.K. government borrowing. The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent the crisis from spreading to the wider economy and putting pension funds at risk.
On Monday Kwarteng’s replacement, Hunt, scrapped almost all of Truss’ tax cuts, along with her flagship energy policy and her promise of no public spending cuts. He said the government will need to save billions of pounds and there are “many difficult decisions” to be made before he sets out a medium-term fiscal plan on Oct. 31.
Speaking to lawmakers for the first time since the U-turn, Truss apologized Wednesday and admitted she had made mistakes during her six weeks in office, but insisted that by changing course she had “taken responsibility and made the right decisions in the interest of the country’s economic stability.”
Opposition lawmakers shouted “Resign!” as she spoke in the House of Commons.
But she insisted: “I am a fighter and not a quitter.”
