Liz Truss's future rests on showdown with MPs

UK prime minister faces crucial 45-minute test to defend her disastrous mini-budget and win back MPs' confidence

British Prime Minister Liz Truss during her second Prime Minister's Questions on October 12. A week later she faces the possibility of being ousted from her post. PA

Clinging on to power in the middle of an economic and political maelstrom, Liz Truss faces her most demanding Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.

A measure of whether Britain’s prime minister remains in office for at least this week will be determined by the support she receives from Conservative MPs.

The 45-minute debate, where friend and foe hold the prime minister to account, will probably determine Ms Truss’s immediate future.

With elections to the 1922 Committee completed late on Tuesday night, the powerful grouping of backbench MPs could well set new rules to trigger a confidence vote in Ms Truss’s leadership.

A weak performance will instantly be seized upon as a validation to oust her following the economic catastrophe caused by her mini-budget less than a month ago.

The portends are not good. Ms Truss will stand up at midday hours after the latest inflation figures showed them running at a 40-year high of 10.1 per cent.

In just her third PMQs since taking office last month, Ms Truss will be questioned for the first time on the unravelling of the disastrous budget.

A well-trodden phrase suggests that a week is a long time in politics. Seven days ago Ms Truss was defending her energy price cap policy to keep household bills below £2,500 ($2,818) for the next two years. Her income tax cut of 1p was the cornerstone for growth and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was in complete agreement.

Prime Minister Liz Truss leaves Downing Street in London for the House of Commons to meet the Brexiteer MPs on Tuesday. PA

It did not, however, appear that those sitting behind Ms Truss were at all convinced. Nor were the markets.

But Ms Truss bought time by sacking her friend Mr Kwarteng and replacing him with the respected moderate Jeremy Hunt.

He steadied the ship ― and the markets ― by ditching the tax bonanza while warning of cuts to government spending to make up for a £40 billion shortfall in finances.

That shored up the City traders but not his colleagues. Challenged by Sir Keir Starmer to answer an urgent question on the economic debacle, Ms Truss sent in her place former leadership rival Penny Mordaunt.

Towards the end of an accomplished defence of the prime minister’s absence, memorably quipping “she’s not hiding under a desk”, her leader appeared in the Commons in one of the more bizarre moments in British political history.

While Ms Mordaunt had pleaded a matter in the national interest had required Ms Truss’s attention, the prime minister suddenly appeared towards the end of the debate. She then sat with a fixed, almost vacant stare and rictus smile, as Mr Hunt then unravelled her catastrophic economic plan.

That avoidance strategy will end at midday, when Mr Starmer raises the first of six questions to the prime minister.

Humane as he is, the Labour leader will likely use sharp questions honed by from his courtroom days, but not so cut throat that they will illicit sympathy for his opponent.

Labour probably want Ms Truss to remain in office, because her presence currently guarantees them a landslide general election victory, such is her lack of popularity.

Her leadership rating is minus 70, worse than Boris Johnson at his nadir. The Conservatives are 36 per cent behind in the latest election survey. Two thirds of Tory members want Ms Truss to go ― the same proportion that voted for her last month.

There is only so long that Conservative MPs can wear the blows that on current trajectory will mean many are ejected from their £84,000 salaries into the economic wasteland of their leader’s making.