Liz Truss faces mounting pressure to quit as Tory MP becomes first to publicly call her out

Liz Truss faces increasing pressure from of his own party to resign, as Tory MPs step up their plots to oust him from office.

Senior Tory MP Crispin Blunt on Sunday became the first to take cover and publicly call for him to leave.

He told Channel 4's Andrew Neil Show that the Prime Minister cannot survive the current crisis.

"I think the game is over and it's about now to know how the estate is being handled," he said.

He called for her to be replaced by a leadership team including Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Ms Truss' new Chancellor , Jeremy Hunt.

Asked how his party would get rid of her, he replied: "If there is such a weight of opinion in the parliamentary party that we have to have a change, then it will be done.

"Exactly how it is done and exactly by what mechanism...but it will happen."

Another prominent Tory MP, former cabinet minister Mark Garnier, also increased the pressure on Ms Truss, saying she was "in power but not in power".

When asked if she could stay at No 10, Alicia Kearns, the new president of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, told Times Radio: "It's difficult".

And former chief whip Andrew Mitchell, an ally of Jeremy Hunt, told BBC World this weekend: "We have to see what happens in the next few days. If she can't do the job...I'm afraid she'll leave."

Former Chancellor George Osborne said Ms Truss would likely be gone "before Christmas".< /p>

Behind the scenes, MPs are actively finding ways to remove the Prime Minister from office in a bid to restore the party's economic credibility and protect it from possible annihilation in parts of the country in the upcoming general election. A number of MPs are expected to hold crisis talks over dinner on Monday evening.

The Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward group is planning a meeting this week to discuss the crisis.< /p>

Leaked messages, seen by the Tortoise news site, show former Brexit secretary David Frost telling his colleagues that "things look bleak".