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British Prime Minister Liz Truss is not long for 10 Downing Street, a senior Conservative MP told the UK Telegraph on Wednesday. “I’d now be calling the relatives to say it is hours, not days,” the individual told associate editor Christopher Hope.
After rumors Truss had fired Chief Whip Wendy Morton in the lobby of the House of Commons and “marched her out,” leading her deputy Craig Whittaker to resign in protest, the government issued an official denial on Wednesday night, insisting both were still in their posts.
The alleged confrontation followed a contentious vote on fracking in which at least 40 Conservative MPs are said to have abstained.
Among those who sat out the fracking vote – which was rumored to be an unofficial “no confidence” motion on the PM – was Boris Johnson, who topped a Tuesday YouGov poll on who would replace Truss. The same survey found that 55% of respondents want Truss out, including 36% of those who voted for her. With just over a month in office, she would be the shortest-serving PM ever.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman also quit on Wednesday after she was found to have emailed a sensitive document from her personal account to the wrong recipient.
She hinted in her resignation letter that she had “concerns about the direction of this government,” alluding to the very public U-turn Truss had been forced to make when her controversial “mini-budget” triggered market chaos last week.
In the wake of the debacle Chancellor Kwasi Karteng was fired and replaced with Jeremy Hunt, who tore up Truss’ radical neoliberal economic policies and hinted that far from the tax cuts the PM had promised in her campaign platform, tax hikes might be necessary instead.
More than half a dozen MPs have publicly demanded Truss’ resignation.
However, she declared on Monday she intended to “stick around” until the next election, echoing the protests of her predecessor Johnson, who had also initially defied his party’s calls to leave until a torrent of resignations made governing impossible.