A Majority Of Tory Members Want Liz Truss To Resign – Six Weeks After Electing Her

YouGov poll shows Conservative grassroots want rid of the prime minister in wake of the mini-budget fiasco.
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A majority of Conservative Party members now want Liz Truss to resign  - just six weeks after picking her as party leader and prime minister.

Truss won the Tory leadership in September with 57.4% of the vote, beating Rishi Sunak who secured 42.6%.

But a YouGov poll published on Tuesday shows 55% of party members now want Truss to quit, with only 38% wanting her to remain in office.

It follows the economic chaos caused by last month’s disastrous mini-budget, most of which has now been dumped by the new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.

The poll also revealed a third of Tory members (32%) want to see Boris Johnson return from the political wilderness and take over again.

A quarter (23%) would prefer Sunak to become PM, while 10% want defence secretary Ben Wallace and 9% want Penny Mordaunt.

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YouGov

While most of those members who voted for Truss at the leadership election want her to stay (57%), a substantial minority would like her to go (39%).

It came as Truss was warned by a senior minister that she cannot afford to make any more mistakes as she battles to save her premiership.

She chaired a meeting of the cabinet this morning after being forced to watch as her entire economic strategy was torn up by Hunt.

Truss is also expected to hold talks with the European Research Group of Brexiteer Tory MPs later today as she desperately tries to hang on to her job.

She has apologised for the mistakes she made over the ill-fated mini-Budget and has declared she intends to lead the party into the next general election.

But ultimately that may not be her choice if MPs move against her.

A separate poll from YouGov found Truss was now nearly as unpopular as Prince Andrew with the wider public.

Armed forces minister James Heappey told Sky News that Truss was doing a “good job” but warned “I don’t think there’s the opportunity to make any more mistakes”.

One of the factors keeping Truss in office despite being forced to abandon the economic platform that got her elected as Tory leader is the lack of an obvious candidate to replace her.

Tory MPs are reluctant to have another leadership contest among the Conservative membership, something that could take months and further damage the party’s reputation.

But avoiding a contest would mean identifying a consensus figure who would be acceptable to the majority of MPs.