Liz Truss is ‘charmless, graceless, brainless, and useless’, former Tory minister says

Jon Stone
Updated ·2-min read

Liz Truss is "charmless, graceless, brainless, and useless", a former Conservative minister has said.

Speaking on Tuesday Edwina Currie, an ex-health minister, said there was absolutely no way the prime minister would survive in office.

Her comments comes after a poll showed majority of Tory members now want the prime minister to resign.

55 per cent of card-carrying Conservatives want Ms Truss to step down – with just 38 per cent wanting her to stay in office, according to the survey by YouGov.

Asked during an interview with the GB News channel whether Ms Truss could survive, Ms Currie said: “Oh, no, of course she can't survive. Oh my goodness. I'm going to put this on record. I think she is charmless, graceless, brainless and useless."

Elaborating, Ms Currie claimed that the Tory leader "doesn't have any of the skills" to put across her argument.

"You sack senior civil servants, you ignore all the systems that are there, and then you wonder why the markets really get freaked out?" she said.

The ex minister said the prime minister was "brainless" for not waiting to cut taxes when the economic conditions allowed.

Former Health minister Edwina Currie (Getty Images)
Former Health minister Edwina Currie (Getty Images)

Ms Currie said the prime minister should stay in office until after Christmas with Jeremy Hunt as chancellor "to save us all the hassle of having to go through another leadership contest".

If the final round of the Tory leadership contest were re-run today Ms Truss would win just 25 per cent of the vote, YouGov found, with Rishi Sunak backed by 55 per cent of voters. YouGov predicted vast leads for Ms Truss during the campaign, with the final result far closer than had been expected.

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18 October 2022: Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group (PA)
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But Conservative members were also keen to see Boris Johnson return to the top job. The-ex PM was backed by a majority (63 per cent) of members as a good replacement.

32 per cent put Mr Johnson as their top candidate, followed by Mr Sunak at 23 per cent. Mr Johnson was forced from office by his MPs after a string of sleaze scandals.

The pollster also found that 77 per cent of British people more generally now disapprove of the government, the highest figure in 11 years of it tracking the data. Just 7 per cent approve.

Ms Truss on Tuesday said she was sorry for mistakes around her mini-budget, which sent financial markets haywire and saw the cost of government debt and mortgages surge.

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