Conservative MPs criticising Liz Truss’s leadership and discussing how to replace her should “shut up”, according to one loyal backbencher.
Sir Christopher Chope was among the allies springing to the prime minister’s defence on Thursday, after she endured a torrid time at the 1922 Committee of backbenchers last night.
“If you are talking to people who never supported Liz Truss and still don’t want her to be leader … then its’s time that they shut up and allowed those who want to ensure that our country is able to break free of the anti-growth coalition to do just that,” he told Times Radio.
Mr Chope also insisted he was confident that Ms Truss would lead the party to victory at the next general election, despite the latest YouGov poll showing Labour in a 28-point lead.
“If I was a betting man I would now be going out and putting money on the Conservatives winning the next general election, not with a landslide but certainly with a good majority,” the Tory veteran said.
Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt are among senior figures now being tapped as possible replacements for the PM without another vote by the membership, according to Paul Goodman, editor of ConservativeHome.
“All sorts of names are being thrown about, Rishi Sunak, even Boris Johnson, Kit Malthouse, Sajid Javid,” said the editor of the influential website.
“But one idea doing the rounds is that Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak, who, after all, between them got pretty much two-thirds of the votes of MPs, come to some kind of arrangement and essentially take over.”
Foreign secretary James Cleverly told the Today programme that any attempt to replace Ms Truss now would be a “disastrously bad idea politically and also economically”.
Pressure has been ramped up on the Ms Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng since their disastrous mini-Budget, due to days of turmoil in the markets, the fall in the pound and rises in mortgage rates.
At a meeting of the backbench 1922 Committee on Wednesday, Tory MP Robert Halfon told Ms Truss she had “trashed the last 10 years of workers’ Conservatism”.
The meeting was said to be “unspeakably bleak” as Tory critics made clear she had done little to reassure them. One former minister told The Independent: “It was horrific. She’s not going anywhere, but she can’t survive.”
Former minister Dame Andrea Leadsom said Ms Truss still “needs a chance to settle in” and “get things under control” amid all the criticism of her leadership.
Conservative MPs are now demanding further U-turns on her tax giveaway. Some made clear the prime minister should reverse or defer her decision to scrap a rise in corporation tax scheduled for 2023, at a cost of £18.7bn.
Ms Truss is considering another U-turn and allowing corporation tax to go up from 19 to 25 per cent next year as Mr Sunak had planned, according to The Sun.
Meanwhile, Ms Mordaunt has said her resting face is that of a “bulldog chewing a wasp”, as she explained her apparent lack of enthusiasm at Ms Truss’s performance at PMQs on Wednesday.
The lack of emotion did not go unnoticed by Labour’s shadow Commons leader Thangam Debbonaire.
She said: “Funereal, unspeakably bleak – just some of the last night savage stream of consciousness flowing from the 1922 Committee of Tory backbench MPs. Dear, oh dear… the leader of the House couldn’t even muster a nod for her prime minister. Why would she?”
Ms Mordaunt replied: “Let me address the comments the honourable lady makes about my facial expressions – my resting face is that of a bulldog chewing a wasp, and people shouldn’t read too much into that.”
King Charles III could be heard muttering “dear, oh dear” as he greeted the prime minister at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday night.
The monarch said to Ms Truss: “Back again? … Dear, oh dear. Anyway.”
