British Prime Minister Liz Truss described herself as “a fighter and not a quitter” Wednesday as she faced down a hostile opposition and fury from her own Conservative Party over her botched economic plan.
Yet the grim faces of Conservative lawmakers behind her in the House of Commons suggested that Truss faces an uphill struggle to save her job. Within hours of Truss’ appearance in Parliament for a regular session titled Prime Minister’s Questions, she lost a senior member of her government
Home Secretary Suella Braverman left her job, though it was not immediately clear whether she quit or was fired.
Braverman is a popular figure on the ruling Conservative Party’s right wing and a champion of more restrictive immigration policies.
Truss fired her Treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday after the economic package the pair drew up spooked financial markets when it was announced on Sept. 23.
The plan’s 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in unfunded tax cuts sparked turmoil on financial markets, hammering the value of the pound and increasing the cost of U.K. government borrowing. The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent the crisis from spreading to the wider economy and putting pension funds at risk.
Truss attended her first session of Prime Minister’s Questions since Kwarteng’s replacement, Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt, ripped up the tax-cutting package unveiled by her new government less than a month ago.
She apologized to Parliament and admitted she had made mistakes during her short tenure as the U.K.’s head of government, but insisted that by changing course she had “taken responsibility and made the right decisions in the interest of the country’s economic stability.”
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