As UK Prime Minister Liz Truss arrives for her first annual Conservative Party Conference as leader, the backlash triggered by her controversial tax cuts may result in her removal from 10 Downing Street by Christmas, The Independent reported.
The conference takes place in Birmingham from 2 to 5 October.
Rebellious senior Tory MPs are cited as warning that Truss has only days to backtrack on the £45Bln of unfunded tax cuts contained in her so-called mini-budget. After the Growth Plan, unveiled by Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng on 23 September, caused a dramatic fall in sterling and led to a plethora of injurious polls for the party, Truss is now reportedly facing down a Conservative backbench rebellion.
‘Electoral Suicide’
According to senior backbenchers, Tory MPs are “livid” over suggestions that the PM intends to renege on a promised benefit uprating to pay for the tax bonanza.
“She needs to reverse Kwarteng’s abolition of the 45p additional rate of income tax and she needs to stop talking about benefit cuts, because it’s electoral suicide. Her position is precarious. There was no justification for the measures they’ve announced, which went way beyond what she promised in the summer. There are no organized conspiracies I’ve heard of but mainstream opinion right across the party is angry, and unless something changes soon people will be having discussions when we get back to the Commons next week,” a former minister told The Independent.
Another Tory MP was quoted as saying:
“I think the 45p decision is untenable and I can’t see it getting through parliament. When the government is then talking about leaning into a squeeze on spending – and particularly welfare – it’s an extremely bad optic.”
The government’s biggest tax giveaway in 50 years which will be of overwhelming help to Britain’s wealthy, and will initially be paid for out of additional borrowing, is said to have prompted some backbenchers to talk about moving against Truss.
There are as yet no "organized plots" against the PM, but they are expected to get underway in earnest unless Truss shows signs of rowing back on some of the "disastrous" measures by the time the House of Commons returns from recess on 11 October.
Some UK media outlets hint that letters of no confidence about Liz Truss have already been sent to the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee.
Despite current rules giving a new leader a year’s grace before facing a challenge, several MPs suggested that “the rules can always be changed”. According to one backbencher, it was “very difficult to see how we recover” with Truss in charge.
Truss and Kwarteng need to “learn important lessons quickly” after a “politically inept” mini-budget, former Tory chancellor Ken, Lord Clarke told the outlet.
Former MP Phillip Oppenheim went as far as to predict that Liz Truss was “quite possibly the last ever Tory prime minister”.
“Nothing in last week’s mini-Budget indicates that our new leaders have the slightest grasp of our long-term structural problems or the solutions, beyond a half-digested, two-dimensional version of Thatcherism,” said Oppenheim.
As Truss and her Chancellor, Kwarteng, head into the Tory Autumn Conference after doubling down in defending their controversial plans, nearly two dozen senior Tory MPs have told Sky News they will not be attending.
Ahead of the conference, Truss insisted that "rough decisions" were needed to boost growth, adding that the "status quo isn't an option," according to the Sunday Telegraph.
But her blithe statements come amid dire circumstances generated by her plans for sweeping tax cuts. The dramatic fall in sterling by more than 4 percent to $1.0327 for the first time in 37 years in the wake of the mini-budget had forced the Bank of England to intervene to prevent even greater economic calamity.
Furthermore, the Conservative Party could be heading for a humiliating defeat at the next general election, showed polling. Britain’s opposition Labour party has gained a 33-point lead over the Tories, according to a YouGov Poll.
Another survey showed only 54 percent of British voters who supported the Tories at the last election in 2019 still support the party again, with 15 percent switching to Labour.
The BMG poll for the i newspaper also revealed Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s personal ratings are much higher than those of Truss. Accordingly, the Labour party could expect a landslide victory at the next general election, according to BMG's Head of Polling, Robert Struthers.
30 September 2022, 06:05 GMT