Michael Portillo has described the last five weeks in British politics as “unlike anything he’s ever seen”.
Mr Portillo also urged Liz Truss to step aside and said Rishi Sunak was the only person he could see now leading the Party.
Speaking on his new GB News show, Portillo, he said today (SUNDAY): “The last five weeks in British politics have been unlike anything that I’ve seen because our party has chosen its leader as Liz Truss.
“She has lost all authority, irredeemably in my opinion, in just over a month. She is the product of an absurd electoral system devised by the party, having to win the votes of Conservative Party members who are a tiny unrepresentative minority of British society.
“She appealed to their policy preferences for low taxes, without any plan for how the public finances could be balanced. And once elected, she implemented the scheme apparently without consulting the Bank of England, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Cabinet or her party.
“She’s had an arbitrary date for the mini-budget and rushed her announcements. Now she’s ditched the last Chancellor, who was as irresponsible as she is and appointed a new one: Jeremy Hunt.
“She’s left with about half the tax cuts that were announced in the mini-budget and Jeremy Hunt was preparing to ditch the cut in the basic rate of income tax. I feel that the markets have decided that she’s not up to the job. Her party thinks that too, but it lacks mechanisms to get rid of her. There’s no consensus on a successor. Yet nobody – who’s not blinded by devotion to her – can imagine that Liz Truss can go on for very long, let alone until a General Election.
“The Conservative Party needs somehow to settle on a successor who must be chosen by acclamation because there’s just no time for a leadership election. I can think only of Rishi Sunak.
“Liz Truss needs to be persuaded to cooperate to stand down in an orderly way, if an overnight change of Prime Minister can be engineered, I believe it’s the only option. Since it’s just not possible to imagine that Liz Truss stays in office.
He added: “The Labour Party, and probably the public, wants a general election and they have justice on their side given the pandemonium devised by the Conservatives. It’s not easy to see how we get from here to a General Election, but I have a feeling that we will get to one by means unforeseeable just now unless the Tories bring about a swift change of Prime Minister.
“The Conservatives have a reputation for resources and for loving power. They used to have a reputation for economic competence, if anything is to be salvaged they need to be merciless now. The chairman of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, has to assume a role never played by any predecessor of convening the party in Parliament and the Prime Minister to bring this catastrophe to an end. For the Conservative Party, this is Dunkirk. “
