BREAKING: Truss to make statement at 1.30 as Tory MPs call for her to go
Liz Truss will make a statement at 1.30pm, with speculation raging that she could announce her resignation as Prime Minister.
The statement comes after a morning of fevered speculation about her future, less than two months after entering Number 10.
Sixteen Conservative MPs have now publicly called for the Prime Minister to resign with many more sending in letters of no confidence to the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers behind closed doors.
Truss’ approval rating is at record lows and the Tories trail Labour by between 25 and 36 points in most polls, after she was forced to junk her entire economic platform over the past two weeks and sack her first-choice chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, has gone to see Truss in Number 10 this morning in an unscheduled meeting.
The 1922 Committee sets the rules for party leadership contests and Brady is responsible for telling Tory leaders if they have lost the confidence of the party.
Tory MP Simon Hoare today told the BBC that Truss had just 12 hours to save her premiership, while one Tory frontbencher told Morning Wire that Truss’ defenestration was “not far” away.
“I believe she has to go, but I won’t say it publicly as that does not help my party,” they said.
Truss suffered another calamitous day yesterday as she sacked Suella Braverman as home secretary and a parliamentary vote descended into complete chaos.
Braverman, who was removed for sending a Home Office document to a Tory backbencher, said in her resignation letter that she had “concerns about the direction of this government” and made a thinly veiled attack on Truss’ personal integrity.
Truss then appointed former transport secretary Grant Shapps, who just two weeks ago was openly plotting against her at Tory party conference.
Braverman’s exit was followed by reports that chief whip Wendy Morton and deputy chief whip Craig Whittaker threatened to quit last night after a Labour vote on fracking, which allegedly saw senior Tory MPs physically manhandling and bullying their colleagues to get them to vote with the party line.
Number 10 clarified just before 10pm that the pair had not resigned, despite reports of Morton publicly rowing with Truss in parliament and shouting “I’m not the chief whip anymore”.
Whittaker is alleged to have yelled out in the voting lobbies that “I am f***ing furious and I don’t give a f**k anymore”.
Deputy Prime Minister Therese Coffey was accused by several people of physically dragging a Tory MP into the voting lobby to vote with the party, in a scene one Tory backbencher told Morning Wire was the stuff of “nightmares”.
Business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg denied last night there had been any physical intimidation of MPs.
Truss’ official spokesman today said: “The Prime Minister acknowledges that yesterday was a difficult day and she recognises the public wants to see the Government focusing less on politics and more on delivering their priorities.
“That is also what the Prime Minister wants.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said last night’s scenes a “new chaotic low” and called for an immediate General Election.
“All the failures of the past 12 years have now come to the boil: the victims of crime who can’t get justice, people dying because ambulances can’t get there in time, millions going without food or heating,” he said.
“And none of it can drum into the Tories the idea that our country must come first. They lack the basic patriotic duty to keep the British people out of their own pathetic squabbles and it’s wrecked the finances of the country and for millions of people. This cannot continue. Britain deserves better.”