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We'll be closing our live page shortly. But first, here's a recap of the key developments in UK politics today:

• The new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said he was "not taking anything off the table" when he looks again at the government's economic plans - alluding to possible tax rises and a spending squeeze
• Speaking on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Hunt said every government department would be asked to make savings - but insisted cutbacks wouldn't be "anything like" the UK's period of austerity in the early 2010s
• He also insisted Liz Truss remained in charge following suggestions he was now the most powerful figure in government after the prime minister appointed him as chancellor in a bid to restore confidence in her government
• But several senior Tory MPs publicly voiced doubt that she could survive as PM - with former minister Crispin Blunt saying "the game is up", and former chief whip Andrew Mitchell commenting that Truss "will have to go" if she couldn't turn things around
• Shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said a Labour government could not commit to honouring the government's pledge for a 1p cut on the basic rate of income tax - despite earlier support for it from leader Sir Keir Starmer
• Tesco chairman John Allan gave a tentative thumbs-up to Labour's plans for the economy, commenting that "there's really only one team on the field at the moment"
• The chancellor met Truss at Chequers, the PM's country retreat, to discuss tax and spending plans due to be announced on 31 October

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Former chancellor Alistair Darling has said the ability in government to manage the economic challenges the UK now faces is "completely absent", as he joined calls for a general election.

Darling, who oversaw the Labour government's response to the 2008 financial crash, told BBC Scotland's Sunday Show: "If you're the chancellor or holding any senior position in government, people need to have confidence that they know you know what you're doing, and that you're capable of seeing this through.

"If people doubt that, you're in trouble."

His comments come after Jeremy Hunt replaced Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor on Friday following a backlash against the latter's mini-budget on 23 September.

Darling also reiterated his view that the government had "trashed" the Bank of England and failed to engage with the international community.

Calling for a general election, he added: "We need a new government in the UK, not years of more uncertainty, which we've had for far too long now."

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The Archbishop of Canterbury says there's "no moral case" for government budgets that harm the poorest in society.

In an interview with the Guardian, Justin Welby said he was "extremely concerned" about how food banks would cope in the months to come, amid rising usage.

During a tour of Australia, he told the newspaper he was "deeply sceptical" about so-called trickle-down economics (an approach which prioritises tax cuts at the upper end).

Archbishop Welby said he didn't want to make a "party political point", but that it was important to "put more money into the hands of those who need the money to buy food, to buy goods, to buy basic necessities."

His remarks came after the government was forced to backtrack on several economic policies, and the exit of Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor.

Image source, Getty Images

As our previous post makes clear, it's not been an easy weekend for the PM in the face of Tory backbench criticism. But she has received public support from figures in the government.

Wales Office minister David TC Davies has accused fellow Conservative MPs of "undermining" their leader with anonymous "whispering" to the media. The Monmouth MP said some colleagues didn't accept losing the argument over the party leadership and "want to pick fights".

Speaking to BBC Radio Wales, he apologised for "all of the problems" and "feeling of instability" caused by the government's mini-budget, though he said his message to fellow Tory MPs was to "get on with the job".

Image source, Getty Images

Throughout the weekend, Conservative MPs have been raising doubts - both privately and publicly - about whether Liz Truss will be able to survive as prime minister.

A short while ago, former minister Crispin Blunt told Channel 4 “the game is up” for the prime minister, and it was only a question now of "how the succession is managed".

His remarks reportedly made him the first MP to say Truss's premiership could not continue.

Here’s what certain other prominent backbenchers have said today.

• Former chief whip Andrew Mitchell told the BBC "I'm afraid [Truss] will have to go" unless she could convince the Tory Party she was up to the job
• There has been “one horror story after another” under Truss’s premiership, senior MP Robert Halfon told Sky News, clarifying that he was not calling for the PM to step down but that things had to improve
• Tobias Ellwood, a former defence minister, said the prime minister’s “ideological and economic experiment” had failed
• Alicia Kearns, the chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, told Times Radio that the question of whether the PM should say in post was “incredibly difficult”
• And former MP and chancellor George Osborne told Channel 4 that Truss was unlikely to hold on until Christmas, as she'd become a PM in "in name only"

We don't know exactly what was said during the chancellor's talks with the PM at Chequers today.

But earlier Jeremy Hunt warned in an interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that nothing was off the table when it came to reviewing government tax and spending plans.

The clip above has some of the key highlights, including Hunt's insistence that the most vulnerable in society would be in the forefront of ministers' minds.

Image source, PA Media

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has been pictured in the back of a car leaving Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat, after meeting Liz Truss to discuss the government's economic plans.

The meeting was the first chance for Truss and her new right-hand man to hold detailed conversations about the fiscal plan, following weeks of market turbulence sparked by September's mini-budget.

Hunt performs last rites on Trussonomicspublished at 14:52 British Summer Time 16 October 2022

14:52 BST 16 October 2022

Faisal Islam
Economics editor

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Having performed what turned out to be the last interview with the former chancellor, it certainly seemed to me like the economic experiment known as Trussonomics was dead, even if Liz Truss remained PM.

But I had not expected the new chancellor to seal the coffin and publicly bury that approach to economics within 24 hours. However, that is what happened in the chancellor’s interview with Laura Kuenssberg today.

And for good measure, Matt Hancock read out a eulogy, of sorts: “There are people who in good faith, made arguments about libertarian economics… we’ve tested those arguments, it is now self-evident for a generation, it didn't work”.

The acknowledgement from new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt on the “mistake” of sidelining the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), and his promises of “very difficult decisions” and not taking any of the Truss tax cuts “off the table”, are all aimed squarely at hitherto unimpressed markets.

In a matter of hours, the markets for British government borrowing reopen, but without the support of emergency help from the Bank of England. But the market can be a capricious friend, as well as a difficult enemy. The economic message may be “credible”, but questions remain as to the political sustainability.

Read more from Faisal: Jeremy Hunt buries Truss’s economic experiment

Former Conservative Chancellor George Osborne has said Liz Truss is unlikely to be able to hold on as prime minster until Christmas.

Channel 4 tweeted a clip from the Andrew Neil Show, which will be broadcast this evening, in which he describes Truss as "PINO - prime minister in name only".

But he adds it's "possible to imagine a situation where she completely resets", does a U-turn on the mini-budget and reshuffles to bring Rishi Sunak supporters into the cabinet.

"At the moment, she's hiding in No 10," he says.

The head of the Royal College of Nursing has urged the new chancellor, and former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt not to cut spending on the NHS and social care.

Hunt has said taxes could rise and public spending fall when he sets out the government's tax and spending plans on 31 October. He has said government departments will be expected to find "efficiencies" and has not ruled out cuts to NHS.

Pat Cullen, from the RCN, said: "If the new chancellor is serious about spending money more wisely, then he must invest in the nursing workforce.

"Asking the Department of Health to make yet more efficiencies - in order words, to cut costs - when the need to invest in the NHS and social care is greater than ever, does not make sense."

Cullen said many nurses were choosing to leave the profession for better paid jobs elsewhere, which was compromising patient care and "the need to pay a demoralised and unvalued profession fairly could not be more pressing."

Asked about his spending plans for on the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme earlier, Hunt said he was "not taking anything off the table".

The rules that keep Liz Truss safe as party leader for at least a year could be ditched if enough Tory MPs support such a move, a senior Conservative MP has warned.

“Of course we have the power to change the rules,” Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the treasurer of the 1922 Committee, told BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House programme.

This committee is responsible for running Tory leadership contests. If Conservative MPs want to get rid of their current leader - as we saw with Boris Johnson - then the committee collects the votes to do so.

A confidence vote can be triggered by 15% of Tory MPs submitting letters asking for such a poll. However, as Truss only became leader last month, current rules state that such a vote cannot be held until September 2023.

But Clifton-Brown explained that a rule change would have to be supported by a "large majority" of Conservative MPs, warning that this would mark a "very serious" moment.

Liz Truss is unlikely to lead the Conservatives into the next election if she cannot convince her party she is up to the job, a former Conservative chief whip has said.

Backbench MP Andrew Mitchell told BBC Radio 4's World this Weekend programme that if the prime minister is unable to do this "then I’m afraid she will go".

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

He said the key aim for new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was to make sure that the monetary and fiscal policy - that is the Bank of England and the Treasury - "work together to crush inflation".

The former chief whip, who led Jeremy Hunt’s campaign for the Tory leadership in 2019, added that he believed Hunt was “the right man” to reassure the market.

The prime minister continues to face criticism from within her own ranks.

"The game is up" for Liz Truss, former minister Crispin Blunt tells Channel 4's Andrew Neil.

"It's now a question as to how the succession is managed", Blunt adds in a clip tweeted by the broadcaster.

Channel 4 reports that this makes Blunt the first Tory MP to call for Truss to step down since Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked as chancellor.

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Prime Minister Liz Truss has been trying to shore up Tory support, having faced criticism from others in her party following her 23 September mini-budget.

As we reported earlier, she's written in The Sun on Sunday, admitting that her tax-cutting plans went "further and faster than the markets were expecting".

"I've listened, I get it," she wrote, external. "We cannot pave the way to a low-tax, high-growth economy without maintaining the confidence of the markets in our commitment to sound money."

Referring to the departure of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, she said it had been a "wrench to see my friend" leave the cabinet.

Her article continued: "But in Jeremy Hunt we have a highly experienced new chancellor who shares my desire to build a high-growth, low-tax economy."

Truss criticised Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer's "anti-growth coalition", adding that "we cannot allow Britain to be held back by this militant mob" comprising protesters and rail unions.

Truss and her new chancellor Hunt are holding talks at Chequers today to discuss economic plans.

Image source, Mark Kerrison/Getty

Sunday is no day of rest for Liz Truss and Jeremy Hunt, her new chancellor. Their work continues at the PM's country retreat, Chequers.

The grand residence holds an important role in British political history.

• Built in the 16th Century, Chequers is located around 40 miles (64km) north-west of central London on the northern edge of the Chiltern hills
• The house and its 1,000-acre estate was gifted in 1917 by MP Sir Arthur Lee to whoever holds the office of prime minister
• It was hoped the fresh air would be good for politicians' health so "the more sanely will they rule"
• Sir Winston Churchill wrote some of his most famous speeches there during World War Two
• Boris Johnson spent time at Chequers after falling ill with Covid-19 in 2020

Image source, Reuters

Labour should back a reversal on cutting the basic rate of incomes tax from 20p to 19p, says former shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

The Sunday Times has reported that Liz Truss's planned 1p cut is now set to be delayed - something that's not yet been confirmed.

This morning, Labour's shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the BBC that Labour could not commit to the cut if the party was in power - despite earlier support for it from leader Sir Keir Starmer.

McDonnell gave his own opinion on BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House programme, saying now was "not the time to be cutting overall tax”.

“What you need is a fair taxation system,” he said, with some tax increases required “to avoid austerity”.

McDonnell thought Labour's hopes for an early general election would be dashed, because the Tories' “instinct for survival" meant no such poll would be called.

The shadow business secretary has acknowledged Labour doesn't have a "magic wand" and wouldn't be able to enact change "as quickly as we might like" if it wins power at the next election.

Jonathan Reynolds accused the Tories of damaging to the economy while answering a question from the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg about recent comments by leader Sir Keir Starmer.

You can watch their exchange above.

Image source, PA Media

More now on some of what the opposition parties in Westminster have been saying today.

The SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford has described the government’s economic plan as a “deeply damaging experiment”.

He told BBC Breakfast that September’s mini-budget, which sparked market turmoil, caused foreign investors to question whether they should place their money in the UK.

He said the prime minister had to take responsibility for the "self-induced" problem.

Image source, Getty Images

Earlier this morning, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey again called for a general election, saying it's not just Prime Minister Liz Truss who's "the problem", but in fact "the whole Conservative Party".

Speaking to the BBC before the airing of a Laura Kuenssberg interview with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Davey said: “They can’t agree, and therefore I think they all need to go."

But he said it was unlikely that the Tories would do the “right thing” and agree to a vote, as they were lagging behind in opinion polls.

Davey said he feared the "damage is already done" following market turmoil stemming from the mini-budget, saying Jeremy Hunt hasn't gone far enough in reversing its policies.