The UK’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, has warned his Conservative colleagues against trying to oust Prime Minister Liz Truss from office.
Truss became prime minister on Sept. 5, but her position has been weakened after her “mini-budget,” which included £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts, spooked the financial markets, causing the pound to fall and borrowing costs to soar.
She replaced Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, a close ally, with former leadership rival Hunt. But several Tory MPs have openly suggested that Truss will find it hard to stay in her job for long.
Talking to the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg,” the new chancellor warned against potential moves to oust the prime minister, saying that political instability at the top and another protracted leadership campaign would be “the last thing that people really want.”
Hunt said Truss remains “in charge” and insisted that voters can still put their faith in her.
“She’s listened. She’s changed. She’s been willing to do that most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack,” he said. “What we’re going to do is to show not just what we want but how we’re going to get there.”
Pressure Piling Up
But some senior Tory MPs on the backbenches have said that it’s time for Truss to go.Former minister Crispin Blunt told Channel 4’s “Andrew Neil Show” that the “game is up” for her.
“I think the game is up, and it’s now a question as to how the succession is managed,” Blunt said.
Alicia Kearns, new chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told Times Radio that the question of whether Truss should continue in charge is “incredibly difficult.”
“Ultimately, I need to listen to colleagues and speak to colleagues over coming days,” Kearns said.
Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons Education Committee, declined to deny that MPs are considering installing a new leader.
“We’re all talking to see what can be done about it,” Halfon said.
“I worry that, over the past few weeks, the government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free-market experiments. And this is not where the country is. There’s been one horror story after another.”
In an unusual intervention, U.S. President Joe Biden also appeared to join in the criticism of Truss’s economic policy, telling reporters, “I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake” and calling the outcome “predictable.”
