KEIR Starmer has demanded an immediate general election to throw out a Tory government that has reached “a new chaotic low” with its “pathetic squabbles”.

The UK Labour leader said the choice for voters was “now as stark as it gets”.

It came as more Tory peers and MPs, including the former Brexit minister Lord Frost, called on Liz Truss to quit over the dysfunctional nature of her administration and reversals on policy.

Ms Truss last week sacked Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor, while yesterday Suella Braverman quit as Home Secretary with a stinging parting shot at the PM’s many U-turns.

A Commons vote on fracking last night also descended into angry and chaotic scenes, leading to the Speaker today launching an investigation into alleged bullying of MPs.

Addressing the TUC Congress in Brighton, Sir Keir joked: “With everything going on, I’m a bit nervous to turn my phone off for half an hour or 45 minutes.

“We really don’t know what will have happened by the time we turn it back on.”

He said: “We face a battle for the soul of our country”.

“Britain deserves better, Britain cannot afford the chaos of the Conservatives any more, we need a general election now.

“Last night in Parliament, even by their standards, a new chaotic low.

“All the failures of the past 12 years have now come to the boil. The victims of crime who can’t get justice. People dying because ambulances can’t get there on time.

“Millions going without food or heating.

“And none of it can drum into the Tories the idea that our country must come first. They lack the basic patriotic duty to keep the British people out of their own pathetic squabbles.”

The Labour leader said Ms Truss was “completely out of touch” with UK economic reality.

“She doesn’t care about the distribution of wealth in Britain, She hasn’t U-turned on that.

“Forget about lines on a graph. If you leave this many people behind, a nation will not grow fairly. You can’t do it with low wages, you can’t do it with insecure jobs and bad work, and you can’t do it without a modern industrial strategy. This isn’t a debate. The evidence is in.”

Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, said the Government was going in “a completely different direction” to the one promised by the Tories’ 2019 election manifesto.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said:““There is no shred of a mandate for this. 

“It’s only happening because the Truss Government messed things up more badly than anyone could have imagined, and enabled a hostile takeover by its opponents.

“Something has to give.

“Truss just can’t stay in office for one very obvious reason: she campaigned against the policies she is now implementing.

“However masterfully she now implements them – and it doesn’t seem that it will be very masterfully – it just won’t do. She said she wouldn’t U-turn, and then she did.”

The “hostile takeover” line was an apparent reference to Jeremy Hunt and Grant Shapps, former supporters of Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership race, being made Chancellor and Home Secretary respectively in the past week.

Fellow Tory peer Lord Ed Vaizey said “the only way out of this mess” was for Liz Truss to stand down and for somebody to be appointed as prime minister by Conservative MPs.

“That is still fraught with problems,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

He said it is clear from Suella Braverman’s resignation letter as Home Secretary yesterday that she regarded herself as a credible candidate to be prime minister.

“And in terms of a kind of shocking self-belief there will be at least five or six people out there who genuinely believe they could be the next prime minister.

“So if the Tory Party cannot have a degree of self-knowledge and realise that the only way forward is to appoint someone they’re pretty much sunk,” he said.

Lord Vaizey said that even if Mr Sunak was appointed, there would be elements of the party who would potentially regard him as an “illegitimate” leader.

He said: “So it is a two-stage process, both of which are extremely difficult to affect – appoint a leader and then have that leader lead a loyal parliamentary party that does what it’s asked to do over the next two years and delivers… sound money and stable government.”

Tory MP Crispin Blunt said Ms Truss’s position was “wholly untenable, and if she doesn’t understand that then I would be astonished”.

He said: “But one of the qualities she has shown is a lack of self-knowledge to this whole process, because it ought to have been clear that she did not have the capacity to lead our party and I don’t think she should have put herself up for the leadership in the first place.

“All of that has now been confirmed. 

“It’s plain what is required. We need to effect a change, frankly, today, in order to stop this shambles and give our country the governance it needs under our constitution.”

He said there was an “obvious” choice for PM  - Mr Hunt or Mr Sunak.

Garty Streeter this morning became the seventh Tory MP to call on Ms Truss to quit.

The South West Devon MP tweeted: “Sadly, it seems we must change leader BUT even if the angel Gabriel now takes over, the Parliamentary Party has to urgently rediscover discipline, mutual respect and teamwork if we are to (i) govern the UK well and (ii) avoid slaughter at the next election.#lastchance.”

Crawley MP Henry Smith then became the eighth, telling Times Radio "we need new leadership" and the Tory party "can't delay" removing Ms Truss, with action "in the coming hours and days".

He added: "In a time of uncertainty, we need solid leadership and I’m afraid I’m very sorry to say that has been distinctly lacking from Downing Street in the last several weeks."

He said Ms Truss “should do the honourable thing and say her premiership has made the wrong calls not just once or twice, but consistently since coming into office".

He added: "I think events will probably gain momentum in the coming hours and days. I think members should be involved as much as possible in choosing the leader."

Steve Double, the MP for St Austell and Newquay, also issued a statement.

He said: "The prime minister has lost control of the government and the confidence of Conservative MPs.

"For the good of the country, she needs to resign.

"Rishi Sunak’s predictions about the disastrous consequences of Liz Truss’s policies have been proven right.

"We now need someone like him to step up to show that they can get a grip on the situation and lead from the front."