Rishi Sunak To Replace Liz Truss? UK Leadership Crisis Deepens With Tory Leaders Seeking PM’s Ouster
UNCERTAINTIES loom over Liz Truss as she could be removed as the UK’s prime minister within “days or weeks.” This development is being seen as a possibility as rebels of the UK’s governing conservative party are joining hands to oust British Prime Minister Liz Truss and replace her with Penny Morduant and Rishi Sunak jointly, the Times reported.
According to a YouGov poll, 62% of Conservative voters who participated in the last election believed that party leaders had chosen poorly when Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were the two candidates left in the running.
The party’s backbenchers are against the party leader’s tax-cutting economic policies, which they consider favour the rich.
Panicked Conservative lawmakers have begun looking at alternatives among the two candidates who received the greatest support inside the parliamentary party: the former British Indian Chancellor, who led his colleagues in polling, and Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt, who finished third. The squabble has erupted at a time when Conservative lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about the Prime Minister’s mini-budget.
On Friday, Truss sacked finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng and appointed Jeremy Hunt, a former candidate for the Conservative leadership, as the finance minister.
Without a clear financial strategy to support them, the predicted GBP 45 billion in tax cuts were viewed as devastating for the UK economy at a time when inflation has already been skyrocketing. Senior Tories are debating electing a new leader and ousting Liz Truss after just six weeks in office because of the harsh criticism she has received.
“Rishi’s people, Penny’s people, and the sensible Truss supporters who realise she’s a disaster just need to sit down together and work out who the unity candidate is.” It’s either Rishi as prime minister with Penny as his deputy and foreign secretary, or Penny as prime minister with Rishi as chancellor, “an MP was quoted by the Times as saying.
The party believes a pact between Penny Mordaunt, who finished third in the early rounds of voting among MPs and later put her support behind Truss, and Rishi Sunak, who lost to Truss in the party membership vote 57 to 43%, is feasible. However, supporters of former British prime minister Boris Johnson have denounced such scheming as anti-democratic by disgruntled Rishi Sunak supporters.
Johnson loyalists have responded and have condemned such a nexus and termed it as “anti-democratic.”
“Those absurdly called grandee MPs (men) agitating to remove Liz Truss are all Sunak supporters. They agitated to remove Boris Johnson, and now they will continue plotting until they get their way. “It’s a plot not to remove a PM but to overturn democracy,” tweeted Tory MP Nadine Dorries, who is a Johnson loyalist.
