“How can she be accountable when she’s not in charge”
Liz Truss endured a humiliating Prime Minister’s Questions today as her premiership lurches from crisis to crisis, with Tory MPs sending in letters of no confidence to the 1922 committee, and her days looking increasingly numbered.
Today’s PMQs was billed as a defining moment for her premiership which is only in its second month after her newly appointed chancellor Jeremy Hunt reversed the entirety of her mini-budget and in the process took a wrecking ball to her entire programme for government, leaving her without a policy platform or political support.
The Tory benches looked glum today with little enthusiasm for Truss’s responses, as the opposition tore into her lack of credibility and authority.
Labour leader Keir Starmer began PMQs by asking: “A book is being written about the prime minister’s time in office. Apparently it’s out by Christmas. Is that the release date or the title?”.
It came after reports today that Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee, had informed Liz Truss that the traditional threshold of letters for a leadership challenge has been breached but that he is insisting on a threshold of half the parliamentary party before acting.
Truss was also criticised for the humiliating U-turns carried out by her government, as Starmer asked how she could go about criticising the Labour Party’s plan for a six-month energy freeze only to later adopt the same policy because of her chancellor.
“How can she be accountable when she’s not in charge”, he asked.
He also focused on the government’s new wave of austerity, asking Truss: “The PM promised last week absolutely no spending reductions. Then her new Chancellor promised a new round of cuts. What’s the point in the prime minister’s promises if they don’t last a week?”
The Labour leader then went on to add that Truss had begun asking him questions at PMQs because ‘we’re a government in waiting and they’re an opposition in waiting’, “Why on Earth would anyone trust the Tories on the economy ever again?”, he said.
There was also some confusion over policy, with the prime minister confirming that she was committed to the triple-lock. That means pensions should rise in line with inflation-which is currently running at 10.1%.
Her announcement contradicts what the chancellor said on Monday, as he ruled out committing to any pledges, including the triple lock, ahead of 31 October. Truss’s latest announcement is likely to lead to accusations of making up policy on the hoof and U-turning once more.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
Picture credit: Youtube screen grab
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