With the huge collapse in the Tory poll ratings and the terrible approval numbers for Truss there is clearly a lot of speculation going on about what happens next for the Tory Party.

The first month of her job has been characterised by a massive collapse for the party in the voting polls and her recording personal ratings which are completely unprecedented.

The Spectator’s Katy Balls has a column headed “Could it be Rishi by Christmas” in which she sums up the mood within the party as it seeks to digest the polling collapse that we’ve seen in the past week. She writes:

In the small hours at the party’s annual conference, there were whispered conversations in bars: are there no other options? ‘We cannot oust another prime minister,’ says a member of the 2019 intake. ‘It would be madness.’ But others argue that, unless the polls change, keeping Truss in No. 10 would mean the Tories resign themselves to electoral defeat. Not even her backers talk about victory being probable. ‘There is a 35 per cent chance she wins the next election,’ says a key supporter……. might the Tories change leader again? A party facing near-certain death is capable of anything. ‘It is very hard to remove a leader,’ says one party old hand. ‘There has to be a sense of desperation before you do it. Things would have to get worse.’ But it’s not impossible to imagine the situation deteriorating further or Truss’s control of her party simply collapsing, as eventually happened to Boris Johnson.

A lot depends on the mood amongst CON MPs as they return to Westminster next week.

My view is that there is something about Liz Truss that makes it hard for her to resonate with large sections of the public and that is reflected in the awful poll numbers. Is she going to survive? I don’t know but I have bets at reasonably good odds that she will be out either this year or next.

Mike Smithson