London: Senior British ministers warned Sunday that division would hand power to the opposition Labour Party at a 2024 election and urged their colleagues to unite behind Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Truss and her team are fighting for credibility less than a month into the job after being forced to make a humiliating U-turn over the choice to eliminate Britain's highest rate of income tax.
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Last week's annual conference of her ruling Conservative Party was marred by dissension and unrest among the party's MPs, and polls show Labor to be far ahead.
"Those plotting the prime minister's downfall are paving the way for a Labor administration. Conservative lawmakers ought to be standing by our party's leader rather than working against her. In the Mail on Sunday, senior Cabinet Office minister Nadhim Zahawi argued that division would only lead to drift, delay, and defeat.
He was one of four cabinet members who wrote pieces for a Sunday newspaper urging their party to support Truss ahead of Tuesday's return to session.
Suella Braverman, the interior minister, declared in the Sun on Sunday that "as a party, we must unite around her now."
As she looks for ways to pay for her tax-cutting growth plan, Truss must decide whether to cap increases in some benefit payments at less than inflation, a move that many lawmakers argue is inappropriate given that millions of families are already struggling to pay for skyrocketing food and energy prices.
The Sunday Times reported that Truss was anticipated to yield to pressure from ministers to rule out a real-terms reduction in welfare, despite the fact that ministers claim they have not yet made a decision.
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It cited two anonymous cabinet members who claimed that the government lacked the support necessary to pass a vote in parliament authorising benefit increases that would be tied to earnings rather than inflation.
They will drag us kicking and screaming toward another screeching U-turn once they realise it's a game of arithmetic and the numbers won't add up, it quoted one as saying. "She can either get ahead of this now and make it go away or we will be dragged kicking and screaming towards another screeching U-turn," it said.
Penny Mordaunt, a cabinet minister, wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that tough decisions needed to be made after stating recently that benefits should increase in line with inflation.
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It's much simpler to accept the status quo. Anyone can salute the photographers. Anyone can satisfy everyone's needs in all ways. The simple part is that. You gauge a leader's ability to make tough decisions when they are in the ring throwing punches after punches while being blinded by media spotlights, the author claimed.