Liz Truss's authority buffeted by gales of laughter

British prime minister declares she's a 'fighter not a quitter', but her time in office could soon end

Prime Minister Liz Truss fends off Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer's accusation during Prime Minister's Questions that she has 'crashed the economy'. PA

When a child laughs in the face of a parent’s admonishment the adult’s authority all but evaporates before the supposed hilarity even ends. Liz Truss faced the grown-up version of that humiliating moment during a gruelling Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday.

Instead of a wall of angry red Labour faces at PMQs, she took stage before a bear-pit of sneering laughter and jeers.

It was as if a raucous Shakespearean comedy was happening on one side of the Commons while the other was watching the closing scenes of Julius Caesar.

The modern day knives of the political elite ― mobile phones ― were alight on the Tory benches as MPs punched WhatsApp messages as fast as the blows received by their leader.

Their words cannot have been kind, as they contemplated their shocking loss of standing among the wider audience of the British public upon whom Ms Truss’s woeful economic experiment has been enacted.

Sir Keir Starmer, who must surely be the Labour leader closest to winning an election since the party's previous victory, in 2005, set the pantomime tone with an opening quip alluding to a biography on Ms Truss.

“Apparently it’s going to be out by Christmas,” he said. “Is that the release date or the title?”

The tone was set for his side to roar while the Tories smarted, their leader now the punchline for jokes.

Ms Truss “is not in charge” and had “crashed the economy”, Sir Keir said.

The prime minister's response was to say that she had said “sorry” and “made mistakes”. She then ventured: “There does need to be some reflection of economic reality from the party opposite,” before being shouted down in disbelief.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer confronts Liz Truss during Prime Minister's Questions. PA

It was Ms Truss’s mini-budget of unfunded tax cuts that led to a surge in interest rates for government loans by markets unconvinced Britain had the money to be so generous.

“Why on Earth would anyone trust the Tories on the economy ever again?” Sir Keir thundered.

Warming to his panto theme, he then named each U-turn the government had made with the opposition benches shouting “gone” as he listed them one by one.

It was a moment of low political theatre, although the chant crashed across the floor into stony-faced Tory MPs, battling against their inner mortification.

They remained unstirred by Ms Truss’s assertion that “I’m a fighter not a quitter”, especially because it was a line once used by a Labour minister.

The mood darkened when she then U-turned on a U-turn by declaring that the Tory commitment to “triple lock” ― tying pensions to inflation ― would be retained despite her new chancellor Jeremy Hunt saying on Tuesday it was “on the table”.

That might buy her time, but only until Mr Hunt makes his fiscal statement on October 31, in which he may well reverse position for a triple U-turn while saving his budget an estimated £11 billion ($12.39bn) with inflation now running at 10 per cent.

As the questioning ended, The National watched as the prime minister made her way along the front bench with barely a Cabinet minister catching her eye, before one kind MP gave her a comforting pat on the back.

Ms Truss is appallingly wounded and the Conservatives cannot continue to suffer further humiliation to their brand, week after week.

The final act could well fall to the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs that authorises the rules governing leadership elections.

It has been suggested that if its chairman, Sir Graham Brady, receives letters of no confidence from one third of his colleagues, 119 MPs, then he will trigger a vote, rather than the 15 per cent which has apparently already been reached.

This will mean a rule change, because under current guidelines a Conservative leader cannot be challenged until a year has elapsed.

Just 44 days have passed since Ms Truss was elected to a term in which she has, so far, destroyed the Tory’s reputation for sound economic management and left Britain’s economy in a parlous state.

Labour probably want Ms Truss to remain in office, because her presence currently guarantees them a landslide general election victory

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. Nearly 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.

While Labour might laugh for now, there will come a sobering moment when the curtain comes down and they find themselves the next act up on stage.