Tory MPs are desperately attempting to convince former MSP Ben Wallace to replace Liz Truss as Prime Minister.
The Defence Secretary is hugely popular within the party and was a favourite to succeed Boris Johnson before ruling himself out of the contest.
But dozens of MPs are now plotting to remove Truss from office within days following an astonishing week of chaos which saw two mini budget u-turns and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng sacked.
They have set their sights on convincing 52-year-old Wallace – who once represented North East Scotland in the Scottish Parliament – to reconsider taking the top job.
The plotters want 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady to then change Conservative Party rules to block a leadership contest, and for Rishi Sunak to become chancellor again.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon meanwhile has joined Labour leader Keir Starmer in demanding a general election to remove the entire government.
She told the Sunday Mail: “The utterly calamitous decisions of Liz Truss and her government over the last month have crashed our economy and put people’s incomes, homes and pensions at risk.
“Despite her desperate attempts to shift the blame, Liz Truss has lost all credibility. Clearly, no-one can have any confidence in the leadership of this lame-duck Prime Minister.
“The only decent thing for Tory MPs to do now is call time on Liz Truss and this entire UK Government, and allow for a general election.”
In July, Wallace said he wouldn’t run because he wanted to focus on the job of “keeping this great country safe”. However more recently he refused to rule out standing in the future.
And despairing MPs are now turning to him in the belief he is the only competent minister left in the Cabinet.
One plotter said: “Most of us now favour a coronation for Ben. He’s the best we’ve got. But he might need some persuading to take the job.
“And getting Rishi back would calm the bond markets and strengthen the pound.”
MPs want Brady to go to Truss this week and urge her to go quietly. He has spoken to her three times already to warn of the peril she is in.
But Starmer said the nation now deserved a General Election, not another unelected PM.
He said: “The quicker this shambolic government is gone, the quicker we can get on with the job of fixing their mess and rebuilding our country.”
Based on recent polls, Electoral Calculus yesterday gave the Tories just 85 seats compared to Labour’s 471 if there was a General Election now.
Labour’s shadow Scottish Secretary Ian Murray said: “The government lost all moral authority with endless partying during Covid and then the lies and cover-up. Now it appears to be burning the house down before they are evicted.
“The price of which is being paid by ordinary people in every part of the country.
“We need a General Election and now so Labour can replace these Tories altogether.”
Senior Conservative figures have warned Truss’s position is hanging by a thread and that she could be gone within the week without decisive action to show she can take control of the government.
Former Home Office adviser Claire Pearsall said: “If the PM is to survive the week she must come up with a clear plan at the beginning of it to get us out of this mess.”
If the PM digs her heels in it will need a change in the rules to allow MPs to bypass the party’s 172,000 members to install their chosen candidate in No10.
Brady will form a new 1922 executive on Tuesday when he returns from holiday.
One plan is to increase the number of MP nominations a contender needs from 20 to more than 50 per cent of the 356-strong Parliamentary party to ensure there is only one name on the final ballot.
But one MP warned: “Our members will be furious not to get a vote and they’ll go on strike.
“That means no one to canvass or deliver leaflets for us. But it’s the least worst option.”
MPs are understood to have dismissed the idea of letting Truss stick it out or trying to get Boris Johnson back into No10.
One said: “Neither of those options work if we want to save the country and the party from disaster.”
Another plan under discussion is to turn to Sunak and Commons leader Penny Mordaunt to lead the party.
However that would be likely to create an argument over who would be PM.
During the last leadership election Sunak got to the support of 137 MPs at the end of Commons voting to Truss’s 113. Mordaunt won 105 votes.
On Friday, Truss astonished her MPs by firing friend and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng for the mini-budget she ordered him to deliver and replacing him with former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. She then cut short a press conference after eight minutes and just four questions from journalists.
Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner said: “She’s crashed the British economy by using it as a guinea pig in her dangerous experiment with trickle-down economics, and it’s working people paying the price.”
In a series of U-turns Truss announced she was ripping up a key plank of her budget to save £18billion, meaning Corporation Tax would rise from 19 per cent to 25 per cent next April as originally planned.
But Hunt has now called her entire mini-budget a “mistake” and said taxes will have to go up.
Former Cabinet minister David Davis told GB News yesterday: “She’s going to have to give the new Chancellor a chance and allow him to do what he wants to do to see whether it works.”
Former Tory leader William Hague said Truss’s premiership now “hangs by a thread” and ex-Treasury Secretary David Mellor added she is “undoubtedly toast.”
A survey of 500 small business owners has revealed nine in ten want a General Election now.
Gillian Ferguson of Scotland’s Twisted Empire Bakes said: “The whole cabinet should be replaced by my son’s junior class who would make less of a mess.”
It means that as she enters her 41st day in office Truss could become the shortest serving PM in British history.
The record is held by George Canning who lasted 118 days in 1827 before dying.
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