Rebels 'plot' to replace Truss with Sunak

London, October 14

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Rebels on the backbenches of the UK’s governing Conservative Party are said to be plotting to replace Liz Truss as party leader and Prime Minister with a so-called “unity” joint ticket team involving former leadership rival Rishi Sunak, it emerged on Friday.

‘Chose wrong candidate’

• A newspaper poll has found that almost half of Tory party supporters believe the party chose the wrong candidate in the leadership election
• The poll found that among those who voted for the Conservatives at the last election, 62 per cent said party members made the wrong choice when the race was shortlisted between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, compared with 15 per cent who said they had got it right

Kwarteng sacked, Hunt new Treasury chief

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has appointed former Cabinet Minister Jeremy Hunt as new Treasury chief, replacing sacked Kwasi Kwarteng. Hunt is a government veteran who has served as former foreign secretary and health secretary, and ran unsuccessfully to lead the Conservative Party in 2019. Truss also replaced the second highest-ranking Treasury minister in a bid to restore order after weeks of turmoil over the government’s economic plans. AP

PM reverses plan to cut corporation tax

• PM Liz Truss (left) has abandoned a planned cut to corporation tax, scrapping a key part of an economic planthat sparked weeks of market and political turmoil
• Truss said at a hastily arranged news conference on Friday that she was acting to “reassure the markets of our fiscal discipline”
• Truss is trying to restore order after three weeks of turmoil sparked by the government’s tax-cutting “mini budget”
• She said, “I want to deliver a low tax, high wage, and high growth economy”

It comes as a YouGov poll of a newspaper found that almost half of Tory party supporters believe the party chose the wrong candidate in the leadership election. The poll found that among those who voted for the Conservatives at the last election, 62 per cent said that party members had made the wrong choice when the race was shortlisted between Truss and Sunak, compared with 15 per cent who said they had got it right.

It has led panicked Tory members of the Parliament to start considering alternatives in the candidates who secured the most votes within the parliamentary party — the 42-year-old British Indian former Chancellor, who was the frontrunner with his colleagues, and Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt, who came in third.

While further U-turns on the tax-cutting plans are expected following crunch meetings at 10 Downing Street, the Tory backbenchers are said to be weighing up the prospect of changing the party leader yet again.

Given that Truss, 47, technically cannot face a leadership challenge, MPs are said to be considering the possibility of rallying behind a joint team of Sunak and Mordaunt where the former is the Prime Minister and the latter his Deputy.

Another option is — Mordaunt, 49, — to take over as party leader and Prime Minister and Sunak as Chancellor, given his track record in office at the Treasury and that he had warned of much of the turmoil that has since unleashed under Truss.

“A coronation won’t be that hard to arrange,” a senior Tory said.