“The question is when — not if — she goes,” one minister remarked on Sunday, a sign that the mood against Liz Truss is hardening within the Conservative party despite her efforts to steady the government with the appointment of a new chancellor.
Tory MPs and ministers will be carefully watching the reaction of markets when they open on Monday following Truss’s decision to appoint Jeremy Hunt as chancellor and scrap her planned rise in corporation tax.
Hunt, who replaced Kwasi Kwarteng, is expected to go further and drop a 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax, another key plank of last month’s “mini” Budget, in a bid to calm markets and restore stability.