Former Chancellor insists Truss unlikely to make Christmas

Crispin Blunt says ‘the game is up’ for Liz Truss

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Liz Truss is currently unlikely to make it to Christmas, a former Chancellor has claimed. George Osborne said the Prime Minister will “probably not” be long in the job unless she take drastic action now with a “complete reset”.

Calls have begun to emerge from within the Tory party for their leader to remove herself from Number 10.

Ms Truss’s administration, which has already gone through a change in significant personnel, has been under heavy fire following former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s announcement of unfunded tax cuts, worth billions, in his September mini-budget.

Financial paper Bloomberg branded the Prime Minister’s first month in office as “the most turbulent debut of any British prime minister in peacetime”, adding: “In just three weeks, her administration has been battered by a crisis of confidence in her policies that have triggered a collapse in the pound and a surge in borrowing costs that threaten to push the UK toward a deep recession and a housing market crash.”

Crispin Blunt today became the first Tory in the Commons to publicly urge Ms Truss to go.

The longtime Tory MP said “the game’s up”, adding: “It’s now a question as to how the succession is managed.”

Following this, Mr Osborne, asked whether the Prime Minister can survive, responded that “the short answer is probably not”.

The Chair of the British Museum and the Northern Powerhouse Partnership told Channel 4 that Ms Truss is “PINO: Prime Minister in Name Only”.

He added: “I would think that the most likely outcome is that she falls before Christmas.”

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Mr Osborne did, however, note that there was a route to continued power for Ms Truss – one which he described as a “long-shot”.

Odds on the Prime Minister leaving Downing Street before the end of the year were slashed on Friday after she sacked Mr Kwarteng from her Cabinet and announced a range mini-budget U-turns.

But Mr Osborne insisted she must go further than this if she is to remain in Number 10 past New Years.

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He said: “One thing that recent weeks have taught you is that things are unpredictable.

“It’s possible to imagine a situation where she completely resets, she completely U-turns on the mini-budget, she does a reshuffle, brings in the [Rishi] Sunak supporters into the Cabinet and is out there fronting things in the way that at the moment she’s hiding in Number 10 trying to avoid fronting things…

“Of course when you say it, it sounds like a bit of a long shot.”

In a fairly damning indictment of Ms Truss’s premiership, having argued that the Prime Minister must backdown on almost all of the actions she has made since taking the job, Mr Osborne described this route as “all that’s really left for her”.

Commenting on these proposals, portfolio manager Pietro Nicholls joked that someone should “call an ambulance – that was brutal!”.

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