A FORMER Tory minister has become the first Tory MP to call for Liz Truss to stand down as Prime Minister

“The game is up,” Crispin Blunt told Channel 4’s Andrew Neil Show.

Mr Blunt, the MP for Reigate for 25 years, said the mechanism for her exit was not in the hands of his parliamentary colleagues, but her leaving was no longer in doubt.

"i would be very, very surprised if there are people dying in a ditch to keep Liz Truss as our prime minister."

He suggested the party could be run by a triumverate of Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, former chancellor Rishi Sunak, and fellow former leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt.

The call for Ms Truss to quit is unlikely to be the last as Tory MPs consider how and when to remove her from Downing Street after the unravelling of her economic prospectus.

Ms Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor after their joint mini-budget collapsed after three weeks of turmoil on the financial markets, reversing key tax-cutting measures.

Mr Kwarteng’s replacement, Jeremy Hunt, has since ripped up most of the platform on which Ms Truss was elected by party members as their leader less than six weeks ago. 

The planned 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax south of the border to 19p is now expected to be delayed, and spending cuts imposed across all government departments. 

Mr Hunt this morning insisted that Ms Truss remained in charge, but he has already been dubbed a de facto Prime Minister because of her weakness and lack of authority.

Mr Blunt, whose interview is broadcast in full at 630pm, said he did not think the Prime Minister can survive the current crisis and she should go immediately.

Asked if Ms Truss could survive, he said: “No, I think the game is up and it’s now a question as to how the succession is managed.

Asked how the party will get rid of her, he said: “If there is such a weight of opinion in the parliamentary party that we have to have a change, then it will be effected.

“Exactly how it is done and exactly under what mechanism… but it will happen.”

He added: "What we need to effect is a transition to some kind of combination of the talents of Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Jeremy Hunt in the top leadership positions in the party.

"They probably need to sit down and have a conversation between themselves about how to best effect the change.

"I think the collective position from those three would command very great support amongst the parliamentary party and among the party in the country, which is desperate to get this sorted out."

Mr Blunt was a Home Office minister under David Cameron and is currently chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee.

Appearing on the same show, former Tory chancellor George Osborne said Ms Truss was "PINO - Prime Minister in Name Only", and she would probably be out of Downing Street by Christmas.

However he said it was also possible to imagine her staying on if she took control and stopped "hiding" in Number 10, altthough it was a "long shot".

Under the rules of the backbench 1922 Committee, Ms Truss should be immune from a confidence vote for a year after being elected leader, but if enough MPs demand a say on her future, the rules could be changed to force her out.

Another Tory MP, Robert Halfon, said Ms Truss’s Government needed a reset “pretty soon”, but added: “I can’t give you hours or days.”

He told Times Radio: “I don’t think that (the Prime Minister) grasps just how badly the public feel that the Government have been over the past few weeks.

He stressed he was not calling for Ms Truss to go, but did want an “apology and a fundamental reset”.

Asked about his colleagues in Westminster, Mr Halfon said: “Most people are really unhappy with what has gone on. Most people are worried because they’re out and about in their constituencies, too.

“They know what the public are saying to them. 

“In all my time in Parliament I have never experienced such a kind of grim and melancholic atmosphere, because people fear that the Government started off, sadly, so badly.”

Former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell said Ms Truss was unlikely to lead the Tories into the next general election if she couldn’t persuade MPs she was up to the job.

The backbencher told BBC Radio 4's World this Weekend programme that if the PM didn’t win over her colleagues "then I’m afraid she will go".

He said: “It is now clear that significant errors were made,” adding the mini-budget was “a victory of ideology over reality, and reality… wins".