Things do not like good for Prime Minister Liz Truss. Her new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, went on record to say that Truss is in charge of the government, but in reality, her premiership is on shaky grounds.
The Prime Minister is trying to hold onto power after her policies crashed the British economy in less than a month. For the sake of the party’s unity, many MPs were biting their tongues to say that Trussonomics was a bad idea from the get go.
Truss has been receiving input from the MPs horrified by her policies to do a government reshuffle and, in the words of Matt Hancock, “bring the broad conservative party into her government.”
Now that President Biden has broken the protocol over “special relationship” and stepped in to criticize Truss’s economic strategy, all bets are off.
MP Andrew Bridgen, who backed Rishi Sunak for the Prime Minster, wrote in his column for The Pavlovic Today that “the fact that President Biden has joined the pile-on of Liz Truss will do nothing but hasten her fast-approaching departure from Number 10 and make her the shortest-serving UK PM in history.”
Who will replace her? Potential successors include Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt on a joint ticket but no one really knows at the moment who of the two would be a prime minister.
The procedure to remove Truss is complex. Conservative Party rules say that Truss can’t be removed for one year, but MPs can submit letters of no confidence to the 1922 Committee. Those letters can’t trigger a vote but could provide the mandate to change the rules, an effort the MPs wanted but failed to pursue when they were ousting Boris Johnson.
On Monday, Truss will hold a meeting with cabinet ministers at No 10, aware that the clock is ticking. An inter-party alliance to oust Truss might be even more united than the one against disgraced former Prime Minster Boris Johnson.
Confidence in PM Liz Truss seems to be melting away. Starmer is waiting in the wings.
