Beleaguered Truss set to lose chief of staff Mark Fullbrook
Liz Truss heckled as she leaves Downing Street press conference
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Liz Truss’ looks set to suffer another blow to her authority after senior Government sources revealed her chief of staff is set to quit amid the turmoil engulfing her government. Mark Fullbrook, who was a director at the powerful C/T Group which he helped found with Australian election guru Sir Lynton Crosby, helped mastermind Ms Truss’ campaign but has now become the subject of angry briefings from senior ministers blaming him for the crisis surrounding the Government.
On a catastrophic day for the Prime Minister where she sacked her close friend and ally Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor and reversed her plans to stop a 6p rise in Corporation Tax to 25p in the pound, Ms Truss is now on the brink of losing yet another key ally.
A number of cabinet ministers have briefed against Mr Fullbrook and questioned why he was not more proactive in ensuring early mistakes particularly around the mini-Budget were not stopped or ironed out.
One minister told Express.co.uk: “He [Fullbrook] was supposed to be the adult in the room, we have so little experience in Downing Street.
“He has just been taking a back seat, he hasn’t been properly engaged and it seems that he has been preparing to quit.”
Another senior minister told an online call of MPs that Fullbrook “had not done his job” in getting the Downing Street operation up and running.
Ministers from both the left and right of the Government have been looking to blame Mr Fullbrook as they try to save the Truss Premiership even though he was instrumental in ensuring she beat Mr Sunak.
One minister told Express.co.uk Mr Fullbrook was also responsible for the debacle at the party conference in Birmingham where Ms Truss performed her U-turn on scrapping the 45p top rate of income tax for high earners and ministers appeared to be at each other’s throats over policies.
The minister said: “None of us had any briefings on policy before that or on lines to take. Most of us still did not have spads [special advisors.
“That was Mark’s job to get things in place but we had complete silence so we were all going into fringe meetings completely unprepared. It was chaos.”
Another minister said: “Basically we have a group of children in Downing Street. They have hardly any experience and they are there because they are loyal to the PM.
“Mark Fullbrook was the one person there with experience who could not be a yes man and could ensure mistakes weren’t made but he hasn’t fulfilled that role.”
However, friends of Mr Fullbrook have hit out at the complaints.
One close ally said: “Mark has worked hard for Liz but ministers are clearly trying to pin the blame for the Government’s failings on him.
“It’s not true that he is at fault.
“But it’s fair to say he may not be remaining in Downing Street much longer.”
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Mr Fullbrook has been an early target for the leftwing media in the UK who have raised questions about some of his clients when he was at C/T including ones in Libya and Venezuala which led to him being interviewed by the FBI.
He has also previously helped former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the late David Trimble and Boris Johnson.
C/T was responsbile for trying to save Mr Johnson’s premiership when it spiralled out of control following the Partygate allegations.
Before helping Ms Truss, Mr Fullbrook was involved in the attempts to make Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Nadhim Zahawi party leader to replace Mr Johnson.
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