Liz Truss’s UK premiership is on the brink of collapse as backbench Tory MPs openly said she should go and even Cabinet ministers discussed her future.
(Bloomberg) —
Liz Truss’s UK premiership is on the brink of collapse as backbench Tory MPs openly said she should go and even Cabinet ministers discussed her future.
A tumultuous day in Parliament on Wednesday saw Truss fire a senior minister, before a routine House of Commons vote descended into chaos as Conservative Party discipline crumbled.
Early Thursday, Truss’s press secretary told journalists by text message that Downing Street would begin disciplinary action against Tories who failed to support the government in a Wednesday evening vote on fracking that was treated as a confidence motion. Beforehand, lawmakers had been threatened with ejection from the parliamentary party if they didn’t fall into line.
But the premier herself also faces being booted from office by her mutinous party as even some of her closest allies join plots to remove her. Cabinet ministers took part in late night conversations about whether Truss should resign, according to two people familiar with the discussions. And increasing numbers of MPs from across the party now want Truss to resign immediately –including her former backer Sheryll Murray, who said on Twitter on Thursday that the premier’s position was “untenable.”
“We need to effect a change, frankly, today in order to stop this shambles,” veteran Tory MP Crispin Blunt told the BBC. Serial rebel backbencher Simon Hoare said Truss had 12 hours to turn things around.
Even the cabinet minister sent out to bat for the government on the morning broadcast didn’t sound confident about Truss’s prospects. Asked on Times Radio whether Truss, 47, will lead the Conservatives into the next election – due in January 2025 at the latest — Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan told Times Radio “at the moment that is still the case.”
The problem for the rebels is the lack of an obvious unifying candidate to replace Truss as leader. Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt are widely seen as the most likely candidates, having come second and third to the premier in this summer’s leadership contest.
Even so, the risk for Truss is that events begin to snowball. Until yesterday, there was a widely-held view in her party that a leadership change should wait at least until a new economic plan is announced on Oct. 31 to calm financial markets.
But her sacking of Home Secretary Suella Braverman for a security breach that in normal times might have earned her a mere reprimand alienated a swathe of the right of her party, and Braverman herself didn’t mince her words in her departing letter to the premier.
“Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics,” she said.
Braverman’s sacking followed that of Kwasi Kwarteng, who was replaced as Chancellor of the Exchequer last week by Jeremy Hunt. That Truss appointed Grant Shapps to replace Braverman is a sign of how weak the premier now is. Just two weeks ago at the Conservative Party conference, he had been openly plotting to oust her.
In just six weeks in office, Truss has already triggered a run on the pound, been bailed out by the Bank of England, abandoned almost her entire policy program and fired two of her closest political allies from so-called Great Offices of State.
UK markets were relatively calm on Thursday, in contrast to the turmoil that followed Kwarteng’s ill-fasted fiscal plan last month. The yield on 10-year bond yields edged eight basis points higher, but are still down almost 40 basis points this week.
A few hours after the Braverman story blew up, the Commons vote on fracking descended into a potentially fatal debacle for Truss, exposing the amateurishness of her operation and the lack of cohesion in her party.
After Tory whips — who manage party discipline — had told MPs the vote was one of confidence, Climate Minister then appeared to tell his lawmakers this wasn’t the case. But he was unable to clarify whether they faced being ejected from the party if they didn’t toe the government line.
Adding to the sense of disorder, as MPs lined up to cast their ballots, Truss’s top parliamentary enforcer, Chief Whip Wendy Morton, announced she was quitting. Truss took her by the arm and followed Morton out of the voting lobbies, according to two people who witnessed the scene. Morton’s deputy, Craig Whittaker, also quit, other people said. Truss’s office later said that he and Morton remained in post.
After the ballots were counted, the danger intensified, amid accusations from a Labour MP, Chris Bryant, that he’d seen members of the government corralling apparently reluctant-looking Tory backbenchers into voting with the administration. That was denied by both the government and the alleged victim.
In the event, Truss won the vote by a routine-looking 326 votes to 230. But her tough line now leaves her with a disciplinary problem. Some 320 of 357 Tory MPs toed the party line, leaving 37 unaccounted for. While some will have been given permission to skip a vote, others clearly defied party orders. Those MPs can expect “proportionate disciplinary action,” the prime minister’s press secretary said.
Hours before the disastrous events in the House of Commons unfolded, Truss had appeared in the same chamber for Prime Minister’s Questions, knowing she needed a strong performance to have any chance of regaining authority.
Truss Fights On Against Backdrop of Glum Tory Faces in Commons
“I’m a fighter and not a quitter,” she said — twice. But the subsequent events have done major damage to Truss’s prospects, and Tory MPs are now queuing up to change her mind.
“It’s a shambles and a disgrace. I think it is utterly appalling. I am livid,” veteran Tory MP Charles Walker told the BBC. “I hope all those people that put Liz Truss in Number 10, I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth it for the ministerial red box, I hope it was worth it to sit around the Cabinet table, because the damage they have done to our party is extraordinary.”
–With assistance from Joe Mayes, Emily Ashton and David Goodman.
(Updates with comments from Blunt, Trevelyan, starting in fourth paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
