Senior aides to Prime Minister Theresa May believe she is “finished” and want her to “fall on her sword” now and set a date for her departure, in hopes this will allow her to “go with dignity”.
The calls follow a second heavy defeat for the Withdrawal Agreement which Mrs May negotiated with the European Union, which is deeply unpopular with Brexiteer Tories as well as Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), on which her minority government relies to achieve a parliamentary majority.
Rather than embark upon the clean, No Deal exit which is the legal default on March 29th in the absence of a deal, the Prime Minister is instead pushing for a third vote on her deal and an extension of the ongoing Article 50 negotiations with the EU and a delay to Brexit — something she had repeatedly promised she would not do.
With a majority of Tory MPs and DUP MPs voting against extending Article 50 in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister was forced to rely on the anti-Brexit, left-liberal opposition parties to pass a motion in favour of extending Article 50 — a situation likely to have contributed to a sense that she has “lost the trust of eurosceptics” among her aides.
Two of these aides, according to The Telegraph, want her to promise she will go by the end of the year, possibly using the Tory conference in October as her swansong, with one saying this is the “only way” she can hope persuade Brexiteers to back her deal in what is being described as “Meaningful Vote 3”.
“She needs to go with dignity, if she sets a date for her departure she can be remembered as the woman who delivered Brexit,” said one.
Support for Mrs May is at a similarly low ebb among Government ministers, with one Cabinet source telling The Telegraph that “there are only two ministers in the Cabinet who still support her. Everyone else has lost faith in her ability to lead.”
“If she refuses to go she faces the ignominy of being kicked out by her own MPs, and all for the sake of a few extra months clinging on to power,” added another party source.
The Prime Minister survived a vote of no confidence in her leadership of the Tories, in which a majority of Tory MPs not on the ministerial payroll called for her to go, with party rules opening her up to another challenge from December.