A Tory MP has become the first to go public with a demand that Liz Truss should resign as prime minister immediately.
Crispin Blunt, the veteran MP for Reigate, told Channel 4′s The Andrew Neil Show on Sunday that Truss should quit “now”.
Truss ripped up her central economic plan on Friday in a bid to save her premiership.
But her decision to sack Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor and replace him with Jeremy Hunt has done little to steady the ship.
Asked if Truss could survive, Blunt said: “No I think the game is up. And it’s now a question of how the succession is managed.
“If there is a such a weight of opinion hit parliamentary party that we have to a change then it will be effected.
He added: Exactly now it’s done and under what mechanism but it will happen.”
Behind closed doors, many Tory MPs have already decided Truss needs to be replaced sooner rather than later in light of market turmoil and tanking poll ratings.
One backbencher told HuffPost UK: “Last week I’d have given her till Christmas. Now I think she’ll be gone by the end of the month.” While a former minister said: “Things are just too bad now. She has to go.”
In broadcast interviews on Sunday morning Tory MPs hit out at Truss, but stopped short of calling for her to quit.
Robert Halfon, the chair of the Commons education committee, told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday the PM had been acting like like a “libertarian jihadist” but said he was not calling for her to quit “at this time”.
In a separate interview with Times Radio, Halfon suggested the PM had “hours or days” to save her job.
Alicia Kearns, the new chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, told Times Radio it was “a very difficult one” when asked if Truss should remain in office.
“I need to listen to colleagues and speak to colleagues over the coming days. But do we need a fundamental reset? Without question,” she said.
Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, when asked if Tory MPs should install a new leader told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “I don’t think we’re there yet.”
But but he added Truss needed to do three things – deliver an economically-credible plan, reshuffle her cabinet and restore trust.
In an interview on the same show, Hunt, the new chancellor, insisted Truss remained “in charge” - despite him having essentially junked her entire mini-Budget.