‘The game is up’

Britain's Prime Minister Liz Truss yesterday vied to reboot her economic programme, but Conservative critics warned the party faces electoral oblivion under her crippled leadership.

With even US President Joe Biden joining in attacks on her libertarian platform, Truss admitted it had been a "wrench" to fire her friend Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor of the exchequer on Friday.

But writing in the Sun on Sunday newspaper, she said: "We cannot pave the way to a low-tax, high-growth economy without maintaining the confidence of the markets in our commitment to sound money."

That confidence was jeopardised on September 23 when Kwarteng and Truss unveiled a right-wing programme, inspired by 1980s US president Ronald Reagan, of £45 billion in tax cuts financed exclusively by higher debt.

Markets tanked in response, driving up borrowing costs for millions of Britons, and the Conservatives' poll ratings have similarly slumped, leading to open warfare in the governing party mere weeks after Truss succeeded Boris Johnson.

"I think the game is up, and it's now a question as to how the succession is managed," senior Tory MP Crispin Blunt said on Channel 4.

Truss has been forced into a screeching policy U-turn which cost Kwarteng his job. Bidding to placate investors, Kwarteng's replacement Jeremy Hunt is now warning that taxes may in fact have to rise, and is pressing for spending restraint by his cabinet colleagues even as Britons endure a cost-of-living crisis.

The new chancellor met the prime minister at her country retreat yesterday to thrash out a new budget plan which he is due to deliver on October 31, effectively demolishing the "Trussonomics" programme that brought her to power.

"It's going to be very, very difficult, and I think we have to be honest with people about that," Hunt told the BBC -- prompting a warning from trade unions of concerted strike action if he enforces painful cuts.

"Truss has become a pointless prime minister -- an empty vessel with no policies or power," the Sunday Times editorialised.

Up to 100 letters expressing no confidence in Truss have been submitted by Tory MPs, the Sunday Times and Sunday Express said.

Opponents were said to be coalescing around Truss's defeated leadership rival Rishi Sunak and another one-time foe, Penny Mordaunt, for a possible "unity ticket" to rebuild the stricken Tories.

But Johnson loyalists -- still seething at Sunak's perceived disloyalty towards the scandal-tainted former leader -- warned against a coronation that cuts out Tory grassroots members.

Any new leader would face strong pressure to call an early general election, and the opposition Labour party has streaked far ahead in the polls.