Liz Truss is facing growing anger from her own MPs as the Conservative conference in Birmingham descends into in-fighting.
Members of the Cabinet have been publicly urging the Prime Minister to raise benefits in line with inflation and questioning her humiliating U-turn on the top rate of income tax.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said today she was "disappointed" by Truss’s mid-conference tax U-turn and accused Tory rebels like Michael Gove of staging a "coup".
And Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt claimed it "makes sense" to increase benefits in line with soaring inflation rather than deliver a real-terms cut.
Truss is instead considering a raise in line with the far lower figure of earnings, but said she would not be sacking Mordaunt for publicly stating her firm stance.
The Prime Minister scrapped her plans for a tax cut for the wealthiest on Monday, saying it had become a “distraction” as senior Tories threatened to vote against it in the Commons.
However, on Tuesday she revealed in an interview at the Birmingham conference that she harbours a possible ambition to bring back the controversial tax cut in the future.
“I would like to see the higher rate lower. I want us to be a competitive country but I have listened to feedback, I want to take people with me,” she told the BBC.
"I’m not contemplating that now, I’m very, very clear that we’ve listened to people about what their priorities are.”
At the same time, her Home Secretary vented her frustration at the U-turn, hitting out at former Cabinet ministers Gove, Grant Shapps and Damian Green for having “staged a coup, effectively, against the Prime Minister".
The scale of the problems facing Truss led Shapps to effectively declare she had 10 days to save her premiership, starting with a crunch conference speech on Wednesday.
He told The News Agents podcast: “The next 10 days is a critical period of time, she’s got a conference speech to make after a very difficult few days, she’s got the MPs coming back together again for the first time since things became choppy – of course, I mean, it’d be ludicrous to say anything else.
“But is it possible? Yes, it is possible, and I’m cheering her on to do it.”
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