Tory MPs are not panicking yet – it’s worse than that

Truss has been prime minister for 22 days, 12 of which were taken up with mourning the death of the Queen. Yet at least one Tory MP is already privately predicting that Truss will be gone by Christmas, writes John Rentoul

The speed of events is stunning (Getty Images)

A Conservative MP with a safe seat told me: “I’ll be all right; I’ll be back here.” After the next election, he meant. “But a lot of these…” He swept his arm across Portcullis House, the annex to the Palace of Westminster where Tory MPs were grazing like herbivores oblivious to imminent danger.

This was a few days after Boris Johnson announced that he would be standing down as prime minister. “There is a mood. Not in favour of Labour, but against the government. We have got to show that we care about them” – another wave of the arm, towards the outside world inhabited by the voters.

Since then, the mood of Conservative MPs has fluctuated. When they thought Rishi Sunak was going to be prime minister, most of them were comfortable with the idea, even if they supported other candidates. As it became clearer, first that Liz Truss was going to win, and second that she really was going to “do things differently”, the mood divided and shifted.

Of course, there is no such thing as a single mood for a body of people as diverse as the parliamentary Conservative Party. Sunak’s people were downcast, and Truss’s supporters were upcast – even if some of her cheerleaders were not rewarded with ministerial office: no room at the inn for Iain Duncan Smith or John Redwood, as it turned out. Penny Mordaunt secured a consolation prize, which meant that she presided, as lord president of the council, over the ceremony of the pen with the King. Kemi Badenoch and her supporters mostly did all right. But Sunak’s team were almost all cast aside in a sectarian show of force.

Thus Truss started her time as prime minister with most of her MPs withholding their judgement. Most of them hadn’t supported her, not even issuing public declarations of allegiance when the prospect of office shone most brightly.

So when things started to go wrong, at about 9.55am on Friday, as one unidentified backbench Tory involuntarily exclaimed, “Jesus Christ,” when Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, announced the abolition of the top rate of income tax, there were few Tory MPs to hasten to the prime minister’s aid.

When the markets reacted badly to the emergency mini-Budget, many Tory MPs responded, privately at least, by saying, “I told you so.” Publicly, they expressed “concern”, said that the new prime minister must be given a chance, and that it was time to pull together as a party and a nation.

But when the political market went into a nosedive, such self-restraint was loosened. On Monday, YouGov published a poll taken on the Friday of the mini-Budget and the two days over the weekend, which put Labour 17 points ahead. Huw Merriman, the MP for Bexhill and Battle, said: “Those of us who backed Rishi Sunak lost the contest but this poll suggests that the victor is losing our voters with policies we warned against.”

Other MPs offer the full range of emotional responses from despair to fury with colourful swear words to match, but what is surprising is how many don’t want to talk at all, or who just repeat that Truss must be given time.

The speed of events is stunning. Truss has been prime minister for 22 days, 12 of which were taken up with mourning the death of the Queen. Yet at least one Tory MP is already privately predicting that Truss will be gone by Christmas.

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Others point out that the rules of the 1922 Committee, which are kept in a drawer in the office of Sir Graham Brady, the committee’s chair, say that a new leader cannot be challenged for 12 months on taking office – an extension of the rule that doesn’t allow a fresh challenge within a year if a leader survives a vote of confidence.

The counter to that is that the rule failed to save either of the last two prime ministers, who both resigned within 12 months of winning a vote of confidence. The rules can be changed, by a vote of backbench Tory MPs, so if they want to get rid of Truss, they can.

But do they? Again, there is no single “mood”. Perhaps it is too early, but it feels as if Tory MPs are sorting themselves into different groups, just as they did in the long run-up to the 1997 election.

Those with safe seats who are plotting for opposition; those who have given up and are looking for jobs outside parliament; those who think there is still time for one more change of leader before the election; and there must be some MPs who sincerely believe that Truss can turn things around, but I can’t find any of them.