Liz Truss news latest: Matt Hancock calls for cabinet reshuffle to add ‘backbench talent’

The quicker this shambolic government is gone, the quicker we can fix their mess, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said as the party gears up for the next general election.

“The prime minister’s humiliating, partial U-turn was necessary. But the damage has been done. The Conservatives have to go. Britain needs a fresh start,” he wrote in an article for The Mirror.

Sir Keir continued: “We’ll create Great British Energy, a home-grown energy company, to ensure we are independent of tyrants like Putin.

“That’s a vision of a future where the whole country contributes to building something better. It makes a mockery of outdated, failed Tory ideology.

“I’m excited to get going. Because the quicker this shambolic government is gone, the quicker we can fix their mess.”

Conservative MP Robert Halfon said Liz Truss’s government needs a reset “pretty soon”.

Speaking to Times Radio, he said: “I don’t think that [the PM] grasps just how badly the public feel that the government have been over the past few weeks.”

He reiterated that he is not calling for Ms Truss to go, but he wants an “apology and a fundamental reset”.

Asked about the situation amongst his colleagues in Westminster, Mr Halfon said: “In all my time in Parliament I have never experienced such a kind of grim and melancholic atmosphere, because people fear that the government started off, sadly, so badly.”

Earlier, he told Sky News that Ms Truss should apologise to the British public for her mini-Budget that was akin to an experiment in “libertarian jihadism”.

Senior Tory MP Alicia Kearns sighed when she was asked if Liz Truss could survive as prime minister, and added that answering the question is “incredibly difficult”.

Ms Kearns, the new chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, told Times Radio: “Ultimately it is a very difficult [question] because I think you know we’ve had the questions around our moral competency.”

She continued: “We’ve now got questions around our fiscal competency.

“I don’t want further questions around even our ability to continue to govern as a party and our ability to stay united. It’s an incredibly difficult one, and ultimately I need to listen to colleagues and speak to colleagues over coming days.

“But do we need a fundamental reset? Without question.”

Tory MP Andrew Griffith refused to say whether he thinks Liz Truss will still be PM at Christmas.

The Treasury minister told Times Radio: “I think Liz enjoys the confidence of the government. She’s the prime minister and the last thing that I think anybody wants is to see more instability.”

Earlier, on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, he said that a new Tory or Labour PM “would increase the level of uncertainty.”

“People at home are just tearing their hair out at the level of uncertainty. What they want to see is a competent government getting on with that job,” he said.

Matt Hancock has led calls for PM Liz Truss to reshuffle her Cabinet.

He said she had to bring the breadth of the Conservative Party into her government.

Mr Hancock, who had to resign as health secretary after being caught violating his own Covid social distancing rules by having an affair with his aide, said: “There’s a huge amount of talent on the backbenches. I’m not talking about me.”

His comments come days after Ms Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor in a bid to save her reputation after their mini-Budget trashed the economy.

You can read the full story by Kate Devlin here

The “last thing” British people want is a new prime minister, newly-appointed chancellor Jeremy Hunt said in an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

Pressure is mounting on PM Liz Truss – including from within her own party – over her government’s disastrous financial plans that led her to sack Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor after just weeks on the job.

Now Mr Kwarteng’s precedessor Mr Hunt has defended Ms Truss’s ability to lead the country after she had to axe plans for cutting taxes for the richest people.

He was asked why people should trust what she or her government says, and he replied: “Because she’s listened. She’s changed. She’s been willing to do that most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack.

“What we’re going to do is to show not just what we want, but how we’re going to get there.”

Recent weeks of political and economic turmoil have been “a disgrace and an embarrassment”, Labour said.

Shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “I think the last three weeks have been, quite frankly, a disgrace and an embarrassment to anyone who cares about this country and the people who live here.

“The damage has been done already.”

He continued: “Whatever moves we see from the Conservative Party, whoever gets the chance of being Chancellor this month or whoever frankly is Prime Minster by next week – people’s mortgages are higher than they needed to be, business investment will be lower than it otherwise would’ve been, and government expenditure and the pressures on that will be worse because of decisions that were made.”

Close to one million people are going on strike “very very soon”, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said.

She said on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday that Jeremy Hunt as chancellor “is not the answer” to the UK’s economic woes.

Ms Graham said Labour should “come out fighting” and stick up for “workers or communities who will be asked to pay the price” for the Tory government’s planned spending cuts.

She was asked by Ms Ridge if we are “getting close to a co-ordinated strike,” to which she said: “Yes. I said yesterday I think we are getting close to one million people going on strike very very soon.”

Tory MP Robert Halfon has condemned briefings against ally Sajid Javid as “disgusting”.

The idea of Mr Javid, who had been chancellor under Boris Johnson, returning to the post was reportedly suggested to PM Liz Truss.

The Sunday Times reported that Ms Truss had “laughed out loud” at the idea of appointing Mr Javid as chancellor, with the No 10 source adding: “She knows who is good and who is s***.”

It would have come after Ms Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng earlier this week for her government’s disastrous mini-Budget.

Mr Halfon was asked on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday if it was true that Mr Javid was “sounded out for the job”.

He said he had “no idea” but that he was “dismayed to read in the newspapers briefings that have come out using four-letter words to describe Sajid Javid.”

Mr Halfon continued: “I’ve known him since university, he’s a really good man, respected.”

In a jab towards the current government and recently-sacked Mr Kwarteng, he added: “He didn’t tank the economy when he was chancellor. These negative briefings about colleagues have got to stop.”

Liz Truss should apologise to the British public for her mini-Budget that was akin to an experiment in “libertarian jihadism”, Robert Halfon said.

The Tory MP, a member of the Blue Collar Conservatives group, said on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “I worry that over the past few weeks the government has looked like libertarian jihadists – and treated the whole country as kind of like laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra ultra free-market experiments.

“This is not where the country is – there’s been one horror story after another.”

He went on: “It’s not just about tax cuts for the rich, but about benefit cuts, cuts to public services. Even today we’re reading that they may impose charges for long-term sick and disabled who are parking at hospitals. This is not what the public wants.”

He added that the PM should apologise and “set out a vision for compassionate conservatism with social justice at its heart.”