Rebels on the backbenches of the UK’s governing Conservative Party are on Friday 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 comes as a YouGov poll found that almost half of Tory party supporters believe the party chose the wrong candidate in the leadership election.
According to a YouGov poll, 62% of Conservative voters who participated in the last election believed that party leaders had chosen poorly when Truss and Sunak were the two candidates left in the running, compared with 15 per cent who said they had got it right. It has prompted terrified, Tory members of Parliament to start considering alternatives in the candidates who secured the most votes within the parliamentary party, the British Indian former Chancellor, who was the frontrunner with his colleagues, and Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt, who came in third.
The government, meanwhile, is reeling from the impact of the controversial mini-budget at the end of last month, with UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng flying back from an International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Washington a day earlier than planned. While further 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 technically cannot face a leadership challenge unless until 12 months unless the powerful 1922 Committee of backbench MPs vote to change their rules, 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.
