Katy Balls Katy Balls

The question Liz Truss needs to answer

If tax cuts are shelved and the chaos continues, what is the point of her government?

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Liz Truss will face the music this lunchtime when she speaks in the Chamber for the first time since she sacked Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor, hired Jeremy Hunt as his successor –then watched as he junked almost the entirety of the not-so-mini-Budget. When Labour summoned Truss for an Urgent Question on the issue on Monday, the Prime Minister sent her one-time leadership rival Penny Mordaunt in her place. Then Truss turned up just as the session was finishing and sat in for Hunt’s Commons statement. Mordaunt was praised for stepping in – while Truss was criticised for her silence.

Can Truss reassure her party that – despite her dire poll ratings – she can lead them out of this crisis?

It only added to unhappiness on the Tory benches about Truss’s handling of the situation. There has been much animated talk among MPs that the Prime Minister could have just days left in No.

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