UK’s Prime Minister Liz Truss lurched deeper into chaos on Wednesday as her hardline interior minister quit, forcing the new leader to turn to one of her strongest critics to shore up her tottering government, reports BSS.
Suella Braverman left as home secretary ostensibly after using her personal email to send an official document to a colleague -- but parted ways with a blistering attack on Truss.
Truss then appointed senior Conservative Grant Shapps in place of Braverman, having fired him as transport secretary when she succeeded Boris Johnson on September 6.
Shapps had supported her party leadership rival Rishi Sunak.
After also losing her finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, over a disastrous budget last month, Truss's economic agenda is in ruins and two of the biggest jobs in her cabinet are now occupied by Sunak allies.
Shapps acknowledged that Truss's government has had "a very difficult period", but that new finance minister Jeremy Hunt had done "a great job of settling the issues relating to that mini budget".
The 54-year-old Shapps is famed for his use of Excel spreadsheets -- which he reportedly put to use at the Conservatives' recent annual conference to show colleagues how Truss could be toppled.
He is seen as one of the party's most effective communicators, but courted controversy early in his political career after revelations that he had used pseudonyms in his prior business life.
The dysfunction deepened late Wednesday with angry scenes in the House of Commons, as Truss played hardball with her own party's MPs over her bid to resume fracking -- drilling onshore for gas.
Her chief whip and deputy chief whip -- charged with enforcing party discipline -- were both reported to have quit in protest at an abrupt change in government tactics over the vote, which Truss eventually won.
Downing Street was forced to issue an unusual statement to insist that the two whips "remain in post".
Long-serving Tory MP Charles Walker lashed out at colleagues who, in his view, had supported Truss in return for personal advancement.
"I hope it was worth it to sit around the cabinet table, because the damage they have done to our party is extraordinary," he told BBC television.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
