The most popular choice to take over the top job remains scandal-hit Boris Johnson, followed by Sunak…reports Asian Lite News
Most Tory party members want Prime Minister Liz Truss to quit and 55% of them would vote for 42-year-old Indian-origin former counselor Rishi Sunak if the United Kingdom’s Prime Ministerial polls were held now, revealed a survey on Tuesday.
A YouGov poll of Tory members found just 25 per cent would vote for Truss.
“With the ongoing political chaos at Westminster dominating headlines, a new YouGov Political Research snap poll of Conservative party members finds significant buyer’s remorse among the party membership surrounding their September decision to elect Liz Truss leader,” says a YouGov analysis.
YouGov also finds that a majority (55 per cent) of members think Truss should resign as party leader and Prime Minister after a series of U-turns and only 38 per cent believe she should remain.
The most popular choice to take over the top job at 10 Downing Street remains the partygate scandal-hit former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is favoured by 63 per cent as a good replacement, with 32 per cent putting him as their top candidate, followed by Sunak at 23 per cent.
“Were Liz Truss to buckle to such pressure and resign, Tory members would most want to see Boris Johnson brought back to replace her,” YouGov noted in an analysis of the data.
“One in three (32 per cent) say he is the person they would most want to take over, followed by 23 per cent for former Chancellor and leadership rival Sunak and 10 per cent for Defence Secretary Ben Wallace,” it said.
As many as 83 per cent of Conservative members say Truss is doing badly as Prime Minister, including 72 per cent of those who voted for her in the leadership election which concluded with her win just over a month ago. Only 15 per cent think she is doing well.
But the likeliest candidates face major obstacles. Take former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, whose dire warnings about Truss’s economic plans have been largely borne out. That gives him credibility with markets.
Though former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s dire warnings about Truss’s economic plans have been largely borne out, he has large numbers of enemies in the Tory party, reported Bloomberg. There are about 100 MPs on the ideological right of the party, including ardent Brexiteers and supporters of Johnson, who are determined to prevent a Sunak premiership.
They view Sunak as the face of the type of Treasury orthodoxy they had backed Truss to reject, and also blame him for triggering Johnson’s downfall. One minister warned that opting for Sunak would lead to even more Tory infighting.
There had been suggestions that Sunak could team up with another hopeful, Penny Mordaunt, on a joint unity ticket. But a person familiar with the matter said Sunak rejected an approach from a senior MP who claimed to be acting on Mordaunt’s behalf.
This comes soon after Liz Truss apologized for her controversial mini-budget that crashed the country’s currency and said she wanted to help people with taxes but she went too far and too fast.
“I do want to accept responsibility and say sorry for the mistakes that have been made. I wanted to act to help people with their energy bills to deal with the issue of high taxes, but we went too far and too fast,” Truss told the BBC’s Chris Mason.
Under the 1922 Committee rules, Truss is safe from a leadership challenge for at least 12 months. However, her mishandling of the economy with a controversial mini-budget has resulted in a brewing rebellion within the ranks just weeks into the job.
Union leaders step up warnings
Meanwhile, trade union leaders are warning of a wave of synchronised strikes by civil servants and public sector workers in Britain this winter, as a new poll for the TUC showed one in seven people across the UK are skipping meals because of the cost of living crisis.
As trade unionists met for the annual TUC congress in Brighton, Mark Serwotka, the head of the PCS union, representing 150,000 civil servants, said it stood ready to strike on the same day as others if its workplaces voted for industrial action in November.
“If we win those ballots, we stand prepared to take action on the same day as any other union to show the government we strike together,” he said.
Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT, which is balloting to extend the mandate for rail strikes, told a fringe meeting: “We need an uprising. We need a whole wave of synchronised, coordinated action. I don’t care what it’s called.
“I don’t care if Paul Nowak or Frances [O’Grady, the incoming and outgoing general secretaries of the TUC] are the ones that coordinate it as long as they don’t get in the way – we can get on with it ourselves, frankly.”
He cautioned union members to “beware of the TUC”, claiming that the body had tried in the past to strike a deal with the Conservative government on strike laws in return for digital voting on ballots. “We’ve got to keep them keen and make sure there’s no sellout,” Lynch said.
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