Hunt says Truss has ‘changed’ as he urges Tory MPs not to ditch her

As senior Tory accuses PM of looking like ‘libertarian jihadist’ who treats country as ‘lab mice’

Jeremy Hunt insisted that Liz Truss has "changed" and listened to criticism of her party’s disastrous mini-Budget as he urged Conservative MPs not to ditch their third prime minister in four years.

Hours after he took the axe to her economic strategy in a bid to save her premiership, the new chancellor warned voters would not thank the party for further instability.

But he was forced to insist she was still in charge after his allies likened him to the CEO of the government. Jeremy Hunt insisted on Sunday that Liz Truss was still leading the charge of Government, as he signalled plans to effectively scrap the economic vision that brought her to power.

He told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that people could still put their faith in her, despite the turmoil of recent days.

Mr Hunt got the job after Ms Truss’s shock sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor on Friday in a bid to stem the fall-out from his disastrous mini-Budget.

She also announced a major U-turn on her flagship plan to cut corporation tax.

But Mr Hunt suggested that the changes went deeper than policy and personnel.

He told the BBC: “She’s listened, she has changed. She has done the most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack.”

But MPs are actively wargaming ways to remove the prime minister from office in a bid to restore the party’s economic credibility and protect it from possible wipeout in parts of the country at the next general election.

One senior MP said: “She can’t lead us into the next election, everyone knows that, it is just whether she goes in the short-term or the long-term”.

Conservative MP Robert Halfon stopped short of calling on her to quit but did launch a dramatic attack on the government calling for an apology and a "dramatic reset" in the next few days.

He told Sky News, Mr Halfon said: "I worry that over the past few weeks, the Government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free-market experiments. And this is not where the country is. There's been one horror story after another."

Asked if Ms Truss should lead his party into the next election, he said: "At this time, I'm not calling for the Prime Minister to go. I worry about further political instability, but even more economic instability. But things have to improve.

"Because if things don't change, I just think that perhaps things may not be able to carry on in the way that they have been."

The prime minister is also facing calls for a reshuffle, just days after she sacked her chancellor in a bid to save her premiership.

Ms Truss has come under fire for a clear out of ministers who backed her opponent, Rishi Sunak, in the Tory leadership contest.

Former health secretary Matt Hancock said Ms Truss had to bring the breadth of the Conservative party "into her government".