Conservative former ministers are plotting to remove Liz Truss as Prime Minister to install a caretaker leader, with Rishi Sunak emerging as the rebels’ choice, i has learned.
The MPs are discussing putting Mr Sunak in No 10 in an unopposed “coronation” believing he will improve the economy and give the party a better chance of holding on to seats at the next election.
They believe the former chancellor would step forward “for the good of the country” even if the Tories were on course to lose the next election, which appears likely with Labour way ahead by around 30 points in several opinion polls.
Although several MPs expect Ms Truss to be given until the local elections next May to show some improvement after a dire start, others want to act quickly to crown a new leader who would not need the endorsement of party members.
An ally of Mr Sunak said he had nothing to do with the plotting and had spent the last week mainly in his constituency in Richmond, North Yorkshire, as well as attending the premiere of Matilda The Musical on Wednesday with his daughter, having left Ms Truss to “own the moment” at a chaotic and divided Tory conference in Birmingham.
“He’s not involved,” the ally said. “He has been in his constituency spending time with family.”
In the summer’s Conservative leadership election, Mr Sunak won the first round of voting among MPs but was defeated convincingly – 57.4 per cent to 42.6 per cent – by Ms Truss in the final-round vote by party members.
However, many believe Mr Sunak’s intense criticism of Ms Truss’s economic plans has been somewhat vindicated after her and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget spooked financial markets, causing the pound to crash to an all-time low against the US dollar, before recovering after emergency Bank of England intervention.
“Liz just hasn’t got what it takes,” an ex-Cabinet minister told i. “Rishi would do this for the good of the country.
“The markets would respond immediately – they would see someone in the cockpit who knew how to fly a plane.”
One option being discussed would be along the lines of Michael Howard’s stewardship of the Tory party between 2003 and 2005, after a disastrous two-year tenure by Iain Duncan Smith.
Lord Howard took over without a leadership election with the express intent to lessen Tory losses at the 2005 election to Tony Blair’s Labour. In the end, the party gained 33 seats, more than had been predicted under Sir Iain.
However, the plan would be fraught with complication. By the time of the Howard coronation, Sir Iain had been leader for two years and lost a confidence vote of Tory MPs.
Ms Truss cannot face a confidence vote for the first year of her leadership.
Yet the former Cabinet minister said it was still possible that Ms Truss could be persuaded to stand down by Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee that presides over leadership contests, if he had received enough letters to show she no longer had the confidence of MPs.
Others called for a “gang of four” or five senior figures to “go in and tell her (Ms Truss) the game is up”.
“Wallace, Rishi, Penny, Cleverly, can say ‘look, this way you can go with dignity’,” a Tory former minister told i.
Another former minister added: “I think some in the party are picking fights with her as they want a Rishi coronation.”
Penny Mordaunt, who is believed to still harbour ambitions for the top job, would need to be persuaded not to stand and allow Mr Sunak to win unopposed, with the prospect of her running again after the Tories lost the 2024 election.
In 2003, the then-MP for West Dorset, Oliver Letwin, persuaded members of the Shadow Cabinet to back Lord Howard, including David Davis, who wanted to stand as leader.
Tory MPs need “someone in the genial Machiavelli mould like Oliver” to persuade colleagues to back the idea of a coronation, the ex-Cabinet minister said.
While Michael Gove, who led the Tory conference rebellion that forced Ms Truss to U-turn on scrapping the 45p top rate of income tax, fits the role of “genial Machiavelli”, he is seen as “too divisive”.
It came as Theresa May’s former chief of staff Nick Timothy said MPs were “certainly” talking about “saving” the party from Ms Truss’s ideological reforms.
“Only MPs can do it, but somebody needs to save the Conservative Party from the libertarians,” he said.
i understands that Mr Gove used similar language after forcing the 45p U-turn, telling colleagues the victory meant “the libertarians have been stopped in their tracks”.
> Penny Mordaunt, who is believed to still harbour ambitions for the top job, would need to be persuaded not to stand and allow Mr Sunak to win unopposed, with the prospect of her running again after the Tories lost the 2024 election.
So they’re already planning to lose the next election. Let labour get all the flak for the dire economic situation the tories themselves have created/worsened, then run in 2029 on “tHe LaSt LaBoUr GoVeRnMeNt”
Isn’t today’s economic climate, all rishi’s signature?
Imagine being so fucking useless that after being in post for less than a month the people who put you there are already trying to get rid of you
Problems for the Tory party with this:
`1. Rish! is extremely unpopular with the public and his wife’s wealth and tax-dodging is an electoral gift to Labour.
2. If there’s a contest, there is no way Boris Johnson will not run – and if it goes to the members, he wins.
I reckon/hope they’re stuck with Mad Liz.
She has only held the position for slightly more than a month, and it appears that a sizable portion of her own party wants her out already. This is not surprising, but we still anticipated them to wait a little while longer.
It’s like being given a choice between gonorrhoea or syphilis.
The last 3 PMs chosen by the Tory party have failed to serve a full term, with the latest lasting 2-3 weeks before talks of removing them started. Perhaps the Tories have shown they can’t be trusted to choose a PM and should lose the privilege.
Ok, so Liz was chosen to step up and do the dirty work with the mini-budget, then take one for the team and get booted and, now poshboy cuntface Rishi will step in like some knight in shining emperors clothes. What a fucking shambles.
Election now!
Liz hasn’t passed her probation period unfortunately
Slightly confused. They voted for Liz, so surely the will of the party has spoken. Frankly, they need to ignore the critics & get Liz done!
You can’t just keep having votes until you get what you want.
Sincerely,
Scotland
Fuck this shit! They’ve had enough goes this round. Time for a General Election!
If ever there were a time for Charles to break protocol on the basis of his government not being in a functional state, this would be it.
Take one for the team Charles. Stepping in when the government have ranked the economy themselves is the one time you _should_ be stepping in.
That’s like installing a smoke detector after the house did burn down.
They’ve made their beds, they should lie in it as is
if it meant they would call a general election, within 12 weeks of him taking the job, then honestly im fine with it.
Having an election, then reversing the result of the election?
I’m all for it but this is utterly destroying any possible pretense at having a democratically elected leader. If they think this absolves the demand for a general election they are very much mistaken.
Replace one glibertarian with another. He’ll make some backpedalling feint in order to preserve the long con.
It was never a good idea to allow membership of a party to vote in a leader instead of MPs. Membership is always more extreme
If the Tories don’t want to face a total election wipeout in two years’ time, they need to drive Liz Truss out and bring in a reformist ***now***. Failure to fix our economic woes will lead to Starmer commanding a supermajority and the Scottish National Party being the main opposition.
Won’t happen… it would likely invoke a GE…. an almost certainty as all confidence would be lost including many Tory MP’s.
He is just another Tory however he has a better grasp of economics then dizzy Lizzy.
Fuck it. Just bring in big Sam as caretaker/manager till the end of the season.
Oh great, let’s replace one maniac with another. Cannot wait for those ‘re-education’ camps Rishi was promising for people who criticised the UK
Rishi was the lesser of two evils and regardless of what many might think he did a reasonable job as chancellor.
I do think race unfortunately played a little part in voting for the Conservatives leadership but not enough to of made that much of a difference in the overall outcome. I think there are too many powerful tory MP’s who are still stuck in a thatcher style government which was what Truss was offering.
26 comments
Conservative former ministers are plotting to remove Liz Truss as Prime Minister to install a caretaker leader, with Rishi Sunak emerging as the rebels’ choice, i has learned.
The MPs are discussing putting Mr Sunak in No 10 in an unopposed “coronation” believing he will improve the economy and give the party a better chance of holding on to seats at the next election.
They believe the former chancellor would step forward “for the good of the country” even if the Tories were on course to lose the next election, which appears likely with Labour way ahead by around 30 points in several opinion polls.
Although several MPs expect Ms Truss to be given until the local elections next May to show some improvement after a dire start, others want to act quickly to crown a new leader who would not need the endorsement of party members.
An ally of Mr Sunak said he had nothing to do with the plotting and had spent the last week mainly in his constituency in Richmond, North Yorkshire, as well as attending the premiere of Matilda The Musical on Wednesday with his daughter, having left Ms Truss to “own the moment” at a chaotic and divided Tory conference in Birmingham.
“He’s not involved,” the ally said. “He has been in his constituency spending time with family.”
In the summer’s Conservative leadership election, Mr Sunak won the first round of voting among MPs but was defeated convincingly – 57.4 per cent to 42.6 per cent – by Ms Truss in the final-round vote by party members.
However, many believe Mr Sunak’s intense criticism of Ms Truss’s economic plans has been somewhat vindicated after her and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget spooked financial markets, causing the pound to crash to an all-time low against the US dollar, before recovering after emergency Bank of England intervention.
“Liz just hasn’t got what it takes,” an ex-Cabinet minister told i. “Rishi would do this for the good of the country.
“The markets would respond immediately – they would see someone in the cockpit who knew how to fly a plane.”
One option being discussed would be along the lines of Michael Howard’s stewardship of the Tory party between 2003 and 2005, after a disastrous two-year tenure by Iain Duncan Smith.
Lord Howard took over without a leadership election with the express intent to lessen Tory losses at the 2005 election to Tony Blair’s Labour. In the end, the party gained 33 seats, more than had been predicted under Sir Iain.
However, the plan would be fraught with complication. By the time of the Howard coronation, Sir Iain had been leader for two years and lost a confidence vote of Tory MPs.
Ms Truss cannot face a confidence vote for the first year of her leadership.
Yet the former Cabinet minister said it was still possible that Ms Truss could be persuaded to stand down by Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee that presides over leadership contests, if he had received enough letters to show she no longer had the confidence of MPs.
Others called for a “gang of four” or five senior figures to “go in and tell her (Ms Truss) the game is up”.
“Wallace, Rishi, Penny, Cleverly, can say ‘look, this way you can go with dignity’,” a Tory former minister told i.
Another former minister added: “I think some in the party are picking fights with her as they want a Rishi coronation.”
Penny Mordaunt, who is believed to still harbour ambitions for the top job, would need to be persuaded not to stand and allow Mr Sunak to win unopposed, with the prospect of her running again after the Tories lost the 2024 election.
In 2003, the then-MP for West Dorset, Oliver Letwin, persuaded members of the Shadow Cabinet to back Lord Howard, including David Davis, who wanted to stand as leader.
Tory MPs need “someone in the genial Machiavelli mould like Oliver” to persuade colleagues to back the idea of a coronation, the ex-Cabinet minister said.
While Michael Gove, who led the Tory conference rebellion that forced Ms Truss to U-turn on scrapping the 45p top rate of income tax, fits the role of “genial Machiavelli”, he is seen as “too divisive”.
It came as Theresa May’s former chief of staff Nick Timothy said MPs were “certainly” talking about “saving” the party from Ms Truss’s ideological reforms.
“Only MPs can do it, but somebody needs to save the Conservative Party from the libertarians,” he said.
i understands that Mr Gove used similar language after forcing the 45p U-turn, telling colleagues the victory meant “the libertarians have been stopped in their tracks”.
> Penny Mordaunt, who is believed to still harbour ambitions for the top job, would need to be persuaded not to stand and allow Mr Sunak to win unopposed, with the prospect of her running again after the Tories lost the 2024 election.
So they’re already planning to lose the next election. Let labour get all the flak for the dire economic situation the tories themselves have created/worsened, then run in 2029 on “tHe LaSt LaBoUr GoVeRnMeNt”
Isn’t today’s economic climate, all rishi’s signature?
Imagine being so fucking useless that after being in post for less than a month the people who put you there are already trying to get rid of you
Problems for the Tory party with this:
`1. Rish! is extremely unpopular with the public and his wife’s wealth and tax-dodging is an electoral gift to Labour.
2. If there’s a contest, there is no way Boris Johnson will not run – and if it goes to the members, he wins.
I reckon/hope they’re stuck with Mad Liz.
She has only held the position for slightly more than a month, and it appears that a sizable portion of her own party wants her out already. This is not surprising, but we still anticipated them to wait a little while longer.
It’s like being given a choice between gonorrhoea or syphilis.
The last 3 PMs chosen by the Tory party have failed to serve a full term, with the latest lasting 2-3 weeks before talks of removing them started. Perhaps the Tories have shown they can’t be trusted to choose a PM and should lose the privilege.
Ok, so Liz was chosen to step up and do the dirty work with the mini-budget, then take one for the team and get booted and, now poshboy cuntface Rishi will step in like some knight in shining emperors clothes. What a fucking shambles.
Election now!
Liz hasn’t passed her probation period unfortunately
Slightly confused. They voted for Liz, so surely the will of the party has spoken. Frankly, they need to ignore the critics & get Liz done!
You can’t just keep having votes until you get what you want.
Sincerely,
Scotland
Fuck this shit! They’ve had enough goes this round. Time for a General Election!
If ever there were a time for Charles to break protocol on the basis of his government not being in a functional state, this would be it.
Take one for the team Charles. Stepping in when the government have ranked the economy themselves is the one time you _should_ be stepping in.
That’s like installing a smoke detector after the house did burn down.
They’ve made their beds, they should lie in it as is
if it meant they would call a general election, within 12 weeks of him taking the job, then honestly im fine with it.
Having an election, then reversing the result of the election?
I’m all for it but this is utterly destroying any possible pretense at having a democratically elected leader. If they think this absolves the demand for a general election they are very much mistaken.
Replace one glibertarian with another. He’ll make some backpedalling feint in order to preserve the long con.
It was never a good idea to allow membership of a party to vote in a leader instead of MPs. Membership is always more extreme
If the Tories don’t want to face a total election wipeout in two years’ time, they need to drive Liz Truss out and bring in a reformist ***now***. Failure to fix our economic woes will lead to Starmer commanding a supermajority and the Scottish National Party being the main opposition.
Won’t happen… it would likely invoke a GE…. an almost certainty as all confidence would be lost including many Tory MP’s.
He is just another Tory however he has a better grasp of economics then dizzy Lizzy.
Fuck it. Just bring in big Sam as caretaker/manager till the end of the season.
Oh great, let’s replace one maniac with another. Cannot wait for those ‘re-education’ camps Rishi was promising for people who criticised the UK
Rishi was the lesser of two evils and regardless of what many might think he did a reasonable job as chancellor.
I do think race unfortunately played a little part in voting for the Conservatives leadership but not enough to of made that much of a difference in the overall outcome. I think there are too many powerful tory MP’s who are still stuck in a thatcher style government which was what Truss was offering.