LONDON — Under mounting pressure to resign, Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain met on Thursday with the head of an influential committee of Conservative Party lawmakers, in what political analysts said could lay the groundwork for her departure from Downing Street after days of turmoil.
The chairman, Graham Brady, traveled to Ms. Truss’s office for what officials said was an unscheduled meeting. Downing Street declined to comment on what the two were discussing. But in his role as the head of a group known as the 1922 committee, Mr. Brady presides over elections for party leader, including the one in which Ms. Truss replaced Boris Johnson as leader and prime minister last month.
In the six weeks since then, her government has descended into chaos, with the reversal of her free-market economic agenda; the ouster of the chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng; the dismissal of the home secretary, Suella Braverman; and a vote to ban hydraulic fracking on Wednesday night that erupted into a near melee, amid accusations that ministers were manhandling Tory lawmakers and threatening them with retribution if they did not vote a certain way.
In the wake of that spectacle in the halls of Parliament, several more Conservative lawmakers called for Ms. Truss to step down Thursday morning, saying that she had lost not only authority, but also control over the government. More than a dozen Tories have publicly demanded her resignation.
“Today’s position remains wholly untenable, and I would be astonished if the prime minister herself did not recognize that,” a Conservative lawmaker, Crispin Blunt, wrote on his website. “If she doesn’t, those closest to her must tell her. This pantomime around the leadership must stop now.”
What is not yet clear is whether Mr. Brady and other Conservatives have settled on a coordinated plan to replace Ms. Truss without holding another protracted leadership contest. There is no consensus choice on whom would take her place, and the dramatic events of the last week have deepened divisions within the party.
Among the potential candidates are Jeremy Hunt, a centrist who replaced Mr. Kwarteng as chancellor; Rishi Sunak, a former chancellor who lost to Ms. Truss in the leadership campaign; and Penny Mordaunt, who also ran in that contest and fielded questions on Ms. Truss’s behalf in Parliament this week.
But the departure of Ms. Braverman, ostensibly for breaching security rules, underlines the acrid culture of the party. An immigration hard-liner, Ms. Braverman harshly criticized Ms. Truss in her resignation letter for failing to heed the wishes of voters. Some analysts have speculated that she could mount a right-wing bid for the job.
Also unclear is the timetable for a resignation: Some lawmakers favor keeping Ms. Truss in office until Oct. 31, when the government is scheduled to release the details of its fiscal plan. The plan is expected to include painful spending cuts, and some believe that Ms. Truss should shoulder the burden of that unwelcome news before she leaves.
