Liz Truss battles on but poll suggests Tory members have lost faith

Liz Truss has survived a meeting of the Cabinet without any ministers calling for her to quit, but Tory members and voters appear to be turning on her.

A snap poll of party members released on Tuesday saw more than half respond that she should resign and 83% say she was doing a bad job.

Downing Street insisted the Cabinet fully supported the Prime Minister and stressed that Ms Truss was focused on the challenges facing the country rather than party infighting.

Asked whether Ms Truss was concerned about ministers discussing replacing her, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Her view is she needs to be focused on what is right for the country rather than on any internal discussions among the party at the moment.

“She is conscious that these are globally difficult times and the UK is in a difficult situation economically.”

Cabinet was dominated by discussions on spending after Chancellor Jeremy Hunt tore up Ms Truss’s original plan for tax cuts and increased public borrowing.

Asked if ministers offered their support, the spokesman said: “Certainly ministers were very involved in the discussions around preparations for the medium-term fiscal plan.”

When he was asked if any of the Cabinet suggested Ms Truss should quit, the spokesman said: “No.”

Ms Truss told Tory MPs from the European Research Group (ERG) that she found axing her tax-slashing programme “painful” and did it “because she had to”.

After the meeting in Westminster on Tuesday evening, aimed at shoring up her position, the Prime Minister’s deputy press secretary told reporters: “She talked about her disappointment in not being able to follow through on the tax cuts, although she stressed that of course, the NICs (National Insurance Contributions) cut has gone through.

“She said she found it painful and that she did it because she had to.”

Ms Truss also made an “unequivocal commitment” to increasing defence spending to 3% of national income by 2030.

ERG chairman Mark Francois described the meeting as “positive” and said: “We were delighted to hear her make an unequivocal commitment to spending 3% of GDP on defence by the end of the decade.”

Armed forces minister James Heappey earlier publicly threatened to quit if the Prime Minister broke her promise to boost defence spending.

But Ms Truss faces unrest over the plans for public spending cuts in other departments, with some Tory MPs voicing their opposition to the potential abandonment of the pledge to increase state pensions in line with inflation.

Backbencher Maria Caulfield said she “will not be voting to end the pensions triple lock”, with former minister Steve Double joining her in saying: “Nor me.”

MPs may be unnerved by a meeting on Tuesday between Mr Hunt, who is seen by many as effectively in control, and Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the powerful 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs.

Treasury sources confirmed the meeting, saying it was a briefing ahead of Mr Hunt’s 1922 appearance on Wednesday, but Ms Truss’s imperilled premiership likely came up.

The challenge facing the Prime Minister was underlined by a YouGov survey of 530 Conservative Party members on Monday and Tuesday which saw 55% say she should resign, and only 38% back her staying on.

About 39% of those who voted for Ms Truss in the Tory leadership race said she should quit, compared with 57% who said she should not.

Some 83% said she was doing badly as Conservative leader, compared with 15% who said she was doing well and 2% being unsure.

Boris Johnson, three months after he was forced to resign following a series of scandals, was favourite to succeed her on 32%, followed by former chancellor Rishi Sunak on 23% and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace on 10%.

Some 60% said they would back a proposal of a unity candidate to succeed Ms Truss being chosen without members having a say.

The poll is not large enough to be considered representative of the wider membership, but YouGov’s research has frequently given a good indication of the party’s mood in the past.

A separate YouGov study of 1,724 British adults between October 14 and 16 – before Monday’s mini-budget U-turns – saw Ms Truss’s net favourability plummet to minus 70.

Just 10% of Britons had a favourable opinion of the Prime Minister, with 80% viewing her unfavourably, the survey suggested.

Among Tory voters her support continues to drop: 20% had a favourable view, with 71% being unfavourable.

The Prime Minister’s current net favourability score of minus 51 among Tory voters is down 26 points since last week.

A Savanta ComRes poll of 1,126 British adults on Monday found that 67% thought Tory MPs should replace Ms Truss, with just 21% saying she should stay.

Among Tory voters 62% thought Conservative MPs should work to remove Ms Truss.

Former Cabinet minister Michael Gove said it was a matter of when not if Ms Truss is ousted as Prime Minister as he warned Britons to expect “a hell of a lot of pain in the next two months”.

Asked at a private event whether it was no longer a question of whether Ms Truss goes, but when, Gove agreed that was “absolutely right”, the Guardian reported.

Senior Tory MP Tobias Ellwood said the Government conducted an “experiment” with the economy that did not go well.

He told Channel 4 News: “There’s no doubt about it, it’s been an experiment we’ve conducted with the economy and it’s not gone well. And there’s a recognition that we now need to reboot, we need to reset, we need to regroup.”

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

Tory MPs are reluctant to have another leadership contest involving the Conservative membership, which could take months and further damage the party.

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

Ms Truss has appointed David Canzini, a veteran Brexiteer who was hired by Boris Johnson to revive his ailing premiership, to her political team.

At Tuesday morning’s Cabinet meeting, Ms Truss acknowledged to colleagues the Government had gone “too far and too fast in the mini-budget”, Downing Street said.

“The Prime Minister said she wanted to be honest with the public that times would be tough but that by addressing long-standing issues now, we can put the country on a stronger path for the future,” her spokesman said.

On Monday, Mr Hunt reversed almost all of the tax cuts his predecessor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced in September’s mini-budget in an attempt to reassure the markets that the Government will take a responsible approach to the public finances.

At Cabinet he made clear that while public spending will continue to rise, departments will need to find ways to save money.