No10 insists snobbery and sexism is driving push to oust Liz Truss

2022-10-16

‘Plot is a vendetta by public schoolboys who don’t like being beaten by a woman’: No10 insists snobbery and sexism is driving the push to oust Liz Truss as PM

Senior Government source claimed ‘vendetta’ is driven by sexism and snobbery
Plotters include Gavin Williamson, Julian Smith, Michael Gove, Grant Shapps
Mel Stride and Oliver Dowden are also allies of Rishi Sunak at heart of the feud
They are targetting 125 MPs who will demand that PM is replaced by Mr Sunak
Lobbying is also underway by supporters of Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt

When MPs return to Westminster tomorrow, they will immediately be immersed in what No 10 insists is a ‘vendetta’ driven by sexism and snobbery.

‘This is a vendetta driven by former public schoolboys who can’t get over the fact that they were beaten by a woman’, a senior Government source claimed last night. Downing Street places allies of Rishi Sunak at the heart of the blood feud, naming Gavin Williamson, Julian Smith, Michael Gove, Grants Shapps, Mel Stride and Oliver Dowden as plotters.

Despite No 10’s public school barb, only Mr Sunak was exclusively privately educated at secondary level. But whatever their schooling, the plotters are understood to have set themselves a target of 125 MPs who will demand that Ms Truss is automatically replaced by Mr Sunak.

Parallel not dissimilar lobbying is also under way by supporters of Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt, who was narrowly beaten into third place by Ms Truss in the MPs’ voting round of last summer’s leadership contest. In fact, some MPs claim Camp Mordaunt is if anything, ‘more on manoeuvres than Rishi is’.

The main tactic being deployed by the PM’s enemies is the traditional Tory rebels’ weapon of choice – no-confidence letters to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the party’s 1922 Committee of backbench MPs. Already, more than 100 MPs are thought to have submitted letters – or made clear they want a leadership contest.

No 10 sources are suggesting there is a ‘vendetta’ driven by sexism and snobbery to oust Liz Truss as PM

Rishi Sunak has been touted as the favourite to take over Liz Truss and has gathered allies

Truss loyalists are clinging to the fact that technically speaking, the ’22 rules state that a leadership contest cannot be held until one year has elapsed since the summer race that ended with Ms Truss installed in No 10.

But many Tory MPs say Sir Graham will bow to the sheer weight of pressure and agree to change the 12-month rule.

Even if he doesn’t, the anti-Truss coalition has a plan B in which the ’22 chairman himself will be ousted and replaced by a rebel such as William Wragg who would rewrite the rule-book. Failing that, a ‘star chamber’ of Cabinet figures could simply assemble and call for the PM to step down in a coup similar to the toppling of Boris Johnson earlier this year.

The extraordinary collapse of Tory parliamentary discipline – illustrated by the monstering Ms Truss received at the hands of the ’22 last week – has sparked a furious round of blame-gaming, with the party whips most in the firing line.

Such was Liz Truss’s anger that only the intervention of Deputy PM and close friend Therese Coffey stopped the PM from sacking her Chief Whip, Wendy Morton.

1922 Committee rules state that a leadership contest cannot be held until one year has elapsed since the summer race that ended with Ms Truss installed in No 10. But many Tory MPs say chairman Sir Graham Brady (pictured with PM) will bow to the sheer weight of pressure and agree to change the 12-month rule.

One Truss ally said that the PM was ‘incandescent’ that she had to face the ’22 last week while Sir Graham was away and therefore unable to moderate proceedings and cool the hotheads’ attacks.

‘Liz was stitched up at the ’22. It was the same public-school boys attacking her at the ’22 who then went out to tweet about how good her tax cuts were.’

According to one MP, the Chief Whip had been totally unprepared by the anger vented against the PM in one-to-one meetings she has held. Joked one backbencher: ‘It’s the only meeting with a Chief Whip I’ve ever heard of where she comes out crying, rather than the MP she’s carpeting.’

The quip is understood to be a cruel reference to the rumour during the last Tory leadership contest but one that Ms Morton had broken down in tears over having to choose between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt for PM.

This time round, however, it is more than just one MP who is tearful with indecision as to just who is the so-called ‘unity candidate’ to end the party’s nightmare.

Gavin Williamson and Grant Shapps, allies of Rishi Sunak, are at the heart of the blood feud

Some are convinced that this time, it has to the man rejected by the party’s grassroots members in the summer – Rishi Sunak. One Tory MP who backed Liz Truss before but has now defected to the ex-Chancellor’s camp said: ‘The only replacement I can see is Rishi.His people have been phoning round asking what people think should happen.’

He added that, despite the views of some colleagues, it could not be Ms Mordaunt.

‘It should not be Penny. She had less support than Liz in the parliamentary party – she finished third in the leadership contest.

‘Only a third of members backed Liz and look at how that’s gone.’

No, he insisted – it has to be Rishi who won the MP phase of the leadership contest. ‘Rishi is the only choice who has the backing of MPs.’ However, one very experienced Tory grimly predicted ‘the party will split’ if anti-Truss colleagues tried to force Sunak on the party.

He conceded colleagues were ‘bewildered at the mess we’re in’, but insisted that ‘replacing one leader without a mandate with another one without a mandate’ was not the answer. In a swipe at Messrs Gove and Shapps for agitating for it, the MP said: ‘This could result in an irreversible split that would keep the Tories out of power for a generation.’

But what about the so-called Mordaunt-Sunak ‘dream ticket’ touted by some backbenchers?

‘No,’ said one senior MP. ‘That’s not going to work.

Tory MP Mel Stride (pictured) is also believed to be one of Rishi Sunak’s close allies

He insisted that Mr Sunak would not ‘play second fiddle to Penny’ and ambitious Home Secretary Suella Braverman would never let Ms Mordaunt, the one-time swimsuit-wearing participant in the Splash! celebrity TV diving show, go unchallenged. However, even ardent Rishi fans concede that another name was being mentioned as the best next leader – Ben Wallace. The Defence Secretary was the surprise absentee from the race last summer.

But he made clear at the Tory conference in Birmingham that his leadership ambitions were not over. However, while one Tory insider said that ‘Ben could be the answer’, another said that after ‘robotic’ Ms Truss, ‘we need someone with more emotional intelligence. Anyway, no one knows what Ben thinks about anything except on Ukraine.’

For some, the lack as yet of a consensus candidate could even leave the field open to the man who received the fewest votes in the first ballot of the summer leadership race – Jeremy Hunt.

‘As the new Chancellor of a very weak PM, he’s in quite a powerful position now, regardless of how hopelessly he did last summer.

‘Hearing him on the Today programme [yesterday] was like listening to a grown-up politician again,’ said one Tory.

Improbably, there is even talk of a return to the PM who infamously lost the Tories’ their Commons majority in 2017 – Theresa May – although yesterday, sources close to the ex-PM said she had received no such approaches.

Lobbying is also under way by supporters of Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt (pictured), who was narrowly beaten into third place by Ms Truss in the MPs’ voting round of last summer’s leadership contest

And haunting all the would-be PMs is the spectre of the most recently-ousted premier. Boris Johnson’s name is said to be the one increasingly mentioned to Tory MPs when out canvassing. At an auction for the Conservatives in Yorkshire, a signed bottle of alcohol from Truss went for only about £350 – while ping-pong bats signed by Mr Johnson fetched roughly £1,500. Said one former Cabinet Minister: ‘Love him or loathe him, Boris changes the political weather.’

Which, sniped many Tory MPs, makes the contrast with his successor so stark – especially after Ms Truss’s ‘train wreck’ press conference on Friday to confirm the sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng.

No matter who they now backed, the politicians were united in their criticism of the PM’s performance. One joked that at just over eight minutes long, the press conference was ‘the same length as Bohemian Rhapsody’ before adding that there was unlikely to be anything ‘rhapsodic’ about the PM’s immediate future. Another compared Ms Truss’s faltering delivery with the robot who last week addressed a House of Lords’ committee, cruelly suggesting the robot had ‘the edge when it came to the human touch’.

The PM’s loyalists dismiss such talk as ‘cheap insults’.

But she will be fortified – for the time being – by dire warnings from long-serving MPs that the party simply cannot change a leader again so soon.

Last night, one MP still loyal to Ms Truss privately urged her to fight on but advised that, unlike her heroine, Margaret Thatcher, she shouldn’t use the same words.

After failing to win enough votes to avoid a second round in the 1990 Tory leadership challenge, Lady Thatcher memorably declared: ‘I fight on, I fight to win.’

She resigned the next day.

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