Before Penny Mordaunt’s interview, we heard from Laura Kuenssberg’s panel.
Senior Conservative MP and former party leader, Iain Duncan-Smith says he does not yet know who he is going to support to be the next prime minister.
He tells the programme “I desperately want my party to settle down”.
He added the party should choose someone that everyone is “going to get behind”. He also said the party must decide if it truly wants to “make a go of these last two years” until the next election.
Meanwhile, the director of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre at Oxford University and an elections analyst, Jane Green, said the Labour lead in recent polls is “really significant” and that what the public cares about is the economy and not a Tory leadership contest.
Former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, also highlighted the difficult economic situation the UK, and other countries around the world find themselves in: “Public finances both in the US and the UK were not put on a sustainable track,” he said, adding that central banks have lost control of inflation.
A British MP says that one of China’s most senior UK ambassadorswas involved in violence towards demonstrators at the Manchester consulate on Sunday.
MPs in Parliament have privilege, allowing them to speak freely without fear of legal action.
China has not commented on Zheng Xiyuan’s alleged involvement.
But the foreign ministry in Beijing defended the actions of consulate staff.
IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERS Image caption, A protester is pulled at the gate of the consulate on Sunday – the consul-general is alleged to be in a mask and hat (far left)
Spokesman Wang Wenbin said people had “illegally entered” the grounds and any country’s diplomats would have taken “necessary measures” to protect their premises.
But the official Chinese version is at odds with video footage and statements from police. Officers had to drag back a protester from inside the consulate gate as he was being attacked.
After Consul-General Zheng Xiyuan ripped down the placards, Ms Kearns told MPs, there was “grievous bodily harm against a Hongkonger, one of whom was hospitalised for taking part in a peaceful protest.
“Some were then dragged onto consulate territory for a further beating by officials who have been recognised to be members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“We cannot allow the CCP to import their beating of protesters, their silencing of free speech, and their failure to allow time and time again protests on British soil. This is a chilling escalation.”
According to a statement by the Greater Manchester Police, around 30 to 40 people had gathered outside the consulate to protest.
“Shortly before 4 pm a small group of men came out of the building and a man was dragged into the consulate grounds and assaulted,” the statement said.
“Due to our fears for the safety of the man, officers intervened and removed the victim from the consulate grounds.”
The consulate is UK territory, but cannot be entered without consent.
Another MP, Labour’s Afzal Khan – who represents the constituency where the consulate is, Manchester Gorton – told the House of Commons he was “sickened” by the scenes.
“The UK stands for freedom, the rule of law, and democracy,” said the Labour MP. “The quashing of peaceful protests will never be tolerated on British soil.”
Mr Khan and other MPs called for the consul-general to be declared a “persona non grata” – meaning a person who is unwelcome in the country.
As a diplomat, the consul-general has diplomatic immunity, meaning he is theoretically protected from prosecution. Declaring someone “persona non grata” can remove diplomatic status and potentially result in expulsion.
Conservative MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith asked if the government would “be prepared to expel the consul-general and any of those that are found to have been part of that punishment beating and the vandalism?”
Foreign Office minister Jesse Norman said, “we will take action once we have a full understanding of the facts”. He added the government had issued a summons to the Chinese charge d’affaires in London – the Chinese ambassador’s deputy – for an explanation.
Mr Norman told the House of Commons: “We’ve already outlined a process of raising this formally with the Chinese embassy… and we will see where these procedures, these legal and prosecutorial procedures, may lead to, and at that point, we will take further action.”
Some MPs called for the Foreign Office to go further, including Labour’s Andrew Gwynne who said: “Had these incidents happened on the streets of Hong Kong, there would have been outrage from the British government, rightly so.
“They happened on the streets of Manchester and yet we have this situationwhere the minister is basically sending a memo to the Chinese embassy, an offer of a cup of tea and a chat with the ambassador.”
Liz Truss has only been in Number 10 for a few weeks, but the possibility of her leaving in the coming months is being seriously considered.
The chancellor has been fired, which is the last resort for any Prime Minister.
Tory MPs including ministers tell me, Liz Truss, herself – prime minister for just five weeks – cannot survive and there is a discussion about how to remove her.
But removing a sitting prime minister who doesn’t want to leave office isn’t always easy. Here are some of the options.
She could resign
No prime minister wants to be hounded out of Downing Street but it could be that Ms Truss, fuelled by cabinet resignations, sees the writing on the wall and announces a Conservative leadership contest.
This is what the last two prime ministers, Boris Johnson and Theresa May, ended up doing after both won no-confidence votes of their MPs but their positions became untenable.
Both of them were in office for three years, though, not just a matter of weeks.
Vote of no confidence
Not so easy. The last Conservative leader to be ousted by their peers in parliament was Iain Duncan Smith in 2003.
Like Ms Truss, he was the choice of the party members, but not his MP colleagues (who favoured Ken Clarke); like Ms Truss, he was also accused of making things worse by not reaching out across the party when appointing his shadow cabinet, and he struggled to maintain authority.
But – thanks to a little-known rule of the backbench 1922 Committee – this is not currently an option.
When Mr Johnson became prime minister in the summer of 2019, the powerful committee decided that a new leader would get a “grace period” of a year before they could be challenged.
Some letters have gone in already, I’m told by MPs.
As one source on the 1922 Committee put it to me, committee chairman Sir Graham Brady “would have to act if we found ourselves in that situation”.
Image: Former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked on Friday
A coronation
The problem is that many Conservative MPs feel it was the membership who chose Ms Truss – based on an unachievable prospectus – and they would rather not allow them to choose her successor.
This is much trickier, as the principle that the leader is “elected by the membership” is enshrined in Schedule 2 of the Conservative Party‘s written constitution, and overturning that would require a two-thirds majority in a vote of the National Conservative Convention, which has 800 members comprising the party’s senior officials including grassroots association chairs.
There is no guarantee of how that might go, and there would be accusations that it was shutting down party democracy.
One option would be for MPs to shortlist two candidates in a leadership contest, and for one of them to drop out – as Andrea Leadsom did in her contest with Mrs May in 2016.
The last candidate standing would become a leader “by acclamation” and that could happen quite quickly.
Image: Former chancellor Rishi Sunak
Or, as ConservativeHome’s Paul Goodman has suggested, MPs could set a higher bar of say 100 MPs supporting each candidate so there is only one possible winner.
But it’s not clear there is a unifying figure to undertake that role.
Rishi Sunak supporters believe he has been vindicated for predicting market turmoil, but it’s far from clear he would be accepted more widely.
An election
Ms Truss could make the extremely bold decision, given her party is now 30 points behind in the polls, to go for an election.
The Fixed Term Parliaments Act has been repealed so she would not need a vote in parliament to do this – to which you would imagine only Conservatives would be opposed.
