BREAKING: UK Prime Minister QUITS, Successor To Be Announced NEXT WEEK

PM makes No10 statement to announce she will be quitting after just 44 days in charge – with leadership election to replace her ‘to be delivered within next week’

Liz Truss dramatically quit today, admitting defeat following crisis talks with Tory chiefs in Downing Street and with MPs in open insurrection.

Revealing she had informed the King of her decision, she said: ‘I cannot deliver on the mandate…. I will remain as PM until a successor has been chosen.’

Ms Truss – who insisted she was a ‘fighter not a quitter’ barely 24 hours ago – said the Tory leadership contest will be completed over the next week. Giving her valedictory statement, she was watched by husband Hugh.

Attention immediately turns to the leadership battle – with Jeremy Hunt ruling himself out within minutes. Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Suella Braverman are thought likely to run – while Boris Johnson, currently on holiday in the Caribbean, could bid for a shock return.

The bombshelll news follows a week of carnage that saw a bewildering array of U-turns on the mini-Budget, the Chancellor and Home Secretary quit, confusion over whether the Chief Whip had followed her out of the door, and MPs wrestling in Commons voting lobbies.

Ms Truss held crisis talks with 1922 chair Graham Brady, deputy PM Therese Coffey and Tory chair Jake Berry in the building earlier, as they delivered grim message about the mood of the party.

A series of previously-loyal MPs joined calls for her to go this morning. Even supportive Cabinet ministers had been conceding the situation is ‘terminal’.

Liz Truss is the shortest serving Prime Minister in British history
Liz Truss will be the shortest serving prime minister in British history.

She has currently clocked up 44 full days in the role – a long way behind the next shortest premiership, that of Tory statesman George Canning, who spent 118 full days as PM in 1827 before dying in office from ill health.

Ms Truss was to have overtaken this number of days on January 3 2023.

But instead she will fall short by more than two months, with the next prime minister due to be elected within the next week.

Liz Truss’s resignation statement in full:

I came into office at a time of great economic and international instability.

Families and businesses were worried about how to pay their bills.

Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine threatens the security of our whole continent.

And our country had been held back for too long by low economic growth.

I was elected by the Conservative Party with a mandate to change this.

We delivered on energy bills and on cutting national insurance.

And we set out a vision for a low tax, high growth economy – that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit.

I recognise though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.

I have therefore spoken to His Majesty The King to notify him that I am resigning as Leader of the Conservative Party.

This morning I met the Chair of the 1922 Committee Sir Graham Brady.

We have agreed there will be a leadership election to be completed in the next week.

This will ensure we remain on a path to deliver our fiscal plans and maintain our country’s economic stability and national security.

I will remain as Prime Minister until a successor has been chosen.

Thank you.

Courtesy: Daily Mail & Agency Reports