MAKE no mistake about it – the UK Government is in full crisis mode.

Liz Truss’s feeble attempt to shift the blame for her government’s disastrous mini-budget has left her now solely in the firing line.

In sacking Kwasi Kwarteng as her chancellor just five weeks after grasping the keys to Downing Street, Mr Truss has lost her biggest ally, and potentially failed to do anything to calm the financial markets that reacted with disgust to the mini-budget.

The Prime Minister has been forced into two humiliating U-turns on the mini-budget, the only key policy she has been able to bring forward since entering Downing Street.

Markets operate on confidence and if there remains no faith in Ms Truss from the City of London, nothing short of a full-scale climbdown of her government’s mini-budget is likely save the Prime Minister’s skin.

Politics can be unpredictable. One day the Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng are in “lockstep” over the strategy, the next day the now-former chancellor is being hauled back from the United States to be sacked for the growth plan signed off by both of them.

There appears to be a fairly alarming culture problem within the Tory party at Westminster.

Ms Truss was plonked in Number 10 after MPs reached the end of their tether with Boris Johnson’s deceit and bluster – but in leaving Downing Street, Mr Johnson brazenly refused to apologise or take any shred of responsibility for what had gone wrong.

If Ms Truss was meant to instil a more trustworthy and honest brand of the Conservatives, we are yet to see it.

The Prime Minister, despite sacking Mr Kwarteng for the mini-budget she and him drew up “in lockstep” and both furiously defended, Ms Truss insisted that the strategy was the correct one – but “current market issues” were to blame.

It appears that the markets simply do not like the strategy.

Ms Truss was backed by Tory members, but in the leadership contest, she did not win the backing of MPs – with the parliamentary party opting for Rishi Sunak.

Even before yesterday’s chaotic drama, Tory MPs were plotting to replace her with Mr Sunak and Penny Mordaunt – while some reports suggested a few Conservative MPs would be happy if a general election was called.

Her sacking of Mr Kwarteng will have done little to reassure some of her backbenchers that she is the right person to take the Tories forward – trailing Labour by some 30 points in the polls.

So throwing her former chancellor and biggest ally under a bus will do little to quash the growing ager and frustration within the parliamentary Tory party, mulling over a government that has been in post for less than six weeks.

The economic car-cash over the last three weeks has been a gift to Labour, now soaring in the polls, and the SNP who have been able to point at the lack of economic sustainability as part of the Union.

If the markets need confidence that the government has a handle on the economy in order to take Ms Truss’s strategy seriously, then we don’t appear to have reached this point yet.

The sacking of Mr Kwarteng and the second huge U-turn on his mini-budget give a perception of chaos – summed up by Mr Truss’s letter to her former chancellor being signed off by Mr Kwarteng himself.

If Ms Truss is insistent she will remain Prime Minister to ensure “economic stability”, actions will have to follow that give any truth to this because she is now the only one left in the firing line, and she has run out of people to blame.

Yesterday, Ms Truss admitted that things were “difficult” but remained adamant that “we will get through this storm”.

But things are far from resolved. The Prime Minister has now been left all alone to weather the torrential downpour she can still expect from her party allies who will demand results.