Explained: Why Is Liz Truss' Prime Ministership In Danger And How Long Might She last?

Tory backbench MPs of the UK are reportedly plotting to replace British Prime Minister Liz Truss as party leader and prime minister with a “so-called “unity” joint ticket team involving former leadership rival Rishi Sunak.”

These reports come at a time when a YouGov poll conducted by The Times has discovered that nearly half of all Tory party supporters believe that their party backed the wrong candidate during the leadership contest last month. 

According to the YouGov poll, amongst the people who voted for Boris Johnson in the last general elections, 62 per cent thought that their party made the wrong choice when they selected Liz Truss over Rishi Sunak. Merely 15 per cent thought that the Tory party membership made the right choice.

Such polls and the financial chaos in UK, especially Liz Truss’ economic policies, has led to a panic amongst Tory MPs. They are now considering other candidates, such as Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, although it is unclear if Sunak will even accept the role as the Tories are projected to lose the next general election by a significant margin. 

The Tory government is still suffering from the impact of Liz Truss’ mini-budget. Before being appointed as the Prime Minister, during the leadership debates with Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss had sold the tax cuts to corporations as her core policy goal. 

Sunak expressed disagreement, stating that tax cuts to corporations in this environment was ‘fairy tale economics’. 

He added that cutting corporation tax doesn’t lead to more investments. The companies merely use that money for stock buybacks. 

Truss expected that cuts in the corporation tax will lead to more investment. 

As soon as the mini budget was announced, UK’s financial markets witnessed chaos and  capital flight.

The International Monetary Fund, which doesn’t criticise OECD nations, went ahead and criticised Truss’ mini-budget and urged her government to reverse the decision. 

The central bank of UK, the Bank of England, stepped in to reduce the chaos in financial markets. Bank of England began buying government bonds as a part of emergency measures, to prevent collapse of pension funds. 

Liz Truss sacked her Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng and appointed Jeremy Hunt as the new finance minister, to ward off the pressure she is facing from her own MPs. Despite sacking the Finance Minister, Truss has been unable to end pressure she is facing from her own party members, who want her to quit. 

There is information from unnamed Tory party MPs, suggesting that at best, Truss might last till the end of this month, if the pension funds and bond markets stabilise. 

Technically, rules of the powerful 1922 Committee of Tory backbench MP’s stipulates that a new PM cannot be challenged within the first 12 months of her tenure but as Liz Truss didn’t actually win a general election, there might be ways to get around this rule. 

“A coronation won’t be that hard to arrange,” a senior Tory party leader told The Times. 

Sunak’s weakness is that former prime minister Boris Johnson’s loyalists don’t like him. 

Although that won't be enough to provide relief to Truss. The Tory party backbench MPs have a history of going after their own leader once they smell blood. 

Even leaders who survive a no-confidence vote, ultimately have to go, be it Margaret Thatcher or in recent times, Boris Johnson, both of whom survived the no-confidence vote but were still shown the way out. A running joke in British tabloids and social media now is - what will last longer - a lettuce or Truss’ premiership?

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves of the Labour Party quipped at the parliament today, "thank you Mr. Speaker, as I regularly say now, I welcome the new chancellor to this place," earning a roar of laughter.

The new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has stated that the government will be going back on all of Liz Truss' unfunded tax cuts.