Liz Truss was on Thursday forced to quit as UK prime minister, drawing to a dramatic close 44 days in office that saw her preside over financial turmoil and catastrophic damage to the ruling Conservative party.
Truss was told to quit by senior party figures, leaving bitterly divided Tory MPs with the challenge of choosing the UK’s third prime minister in a matter of months.
In a brief statement in Downing Street at 1.35pm, Truss said she had notified King Charles she was standing down as Conservative leader and that a new party leader and prime minister would be chosen next week.
She will go down in history as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, her government having collapsed in the wake of its failed “mini” Budget last month, which contained £45bn of unfunded tax cuts and triggered turmoil in the sterling and gilt markets.
Truss said she had been elected Tory leader to deliver a “low tax, high growth” economy, taking advantage of the “freedoms of Brexit”. But she conceded defeat: “Given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative party.”
Rishi Sunak, former chancellor, and Penny Mordaunt, leader of the House of Commons, are the two frontrunners to replace her, although several other candidates could enter the fray.
Suella Braverman, former home secretary, will be encouraged by supporters to stand as a flag-bearer for the Tory right, while Boris Johnson’s supporters believe he could make a comeback, little more than three months after he was forced out of office.
Jeremy Hunt, the current chancellor, has ruled out another run for the Tory leadership and will hope to stay at the Treasury. However, Truss’s statement throws Britain’s economic prospects into further confusion.
Hunt is scheduled to deliver a plan to fill a £40bn hole in Britain’s public accounts on October 31, but a new prime minister is expected to be in place by that date and will want to put their stamp on the plan.
Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, met Truss on Thursday morning and later announced that he expected to see a new leader and prime minister elected by Friday October 28.
Brady said the “expectation” was that Tory members would be given a say in the choice of a new Tory leader, but that more details on the process would be given on Thursday afternoon.
Under the usual rules, Tory MPs would draw up a shortlist of two candidates in a series of votes with members given the final choice.
Brady confirmed that if one of the two candidates on the shortlist pulled out — some Tory MPs hope that the runner-up would agree to do so — there would be no ballot of members.
Jake Berry, Tory chair, and Thérèse Coffey, deputy prime minister, were among those who saw Truss in the hours before she resigned.
At least a dozen Tory MPs had called on Truss to resign, including Miriam Cates, who is a member of the 1922 committee executive. “It seems untenable,” she said. “Yes, I do think it’s time for the prime minister to go.”
Truss’s premiership, which began on September 6, has seen her economic strategy crash and burn, the sacking of her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and Braverman’s forced resignation as home secretary on Wednesday.
After Truss’s resignation, gilts held on to recent gains, having previously rallied on Hunt’s cancellation of her tax-cutting plans. The 10-year yield was 0.09 percentage points lower at 3.78 per cent, reflecting a rise in prices, while sterling also remained higher, trading up 0.5 per cent on the day against the dollar at $1.127.
Additional reporting by Tommy Stubbington