Officer of the 1922 Committee Nigel Evans has said that there is now a “clamour” of calls for Theresa May to resign and that he wants her to confirm she will be stepping down as prime minister “today.”
Mr Evans made the comments on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday after The Telegraph reported that backbench Members of Parliament are planning to change the party rules to force the prime minister to name her departure date.
“I hope that she does accept the fact that the call for her resignation now is a clamour. It’s not just in Westminster, but we’ve had the news that 70 chairs of conservative associations throughout the country have now said that they reluctantly have no confidence in the prime minister,” Mr Evans told the BBC.
“When you’ve had four extensions to Article 50, when were told 108 times to leave the European Union on March the 29th and then she says at the dispatch box that she could countenance no extension beyond June 30th, but within days of saying that before the jelly had even set, she said October the 31st, you know then that there are severe problems,” he added.
“I would be delighted today if she was announcing her resignation and then we could then have an orderly election to chose a leader of the Conservative Party. The only way that we can break this impasse properly is if we fresh leadership of the Conservative Party,” he said.
The Telegraph reports that Sir Graham Brady is set to meet with officers of the influential backbench 1922 Committee, where five of the six officers will call for Mrs May to resign immediately. The committee is set to discuss changing party rules protecting unpopular leaders from subsequent confidence votes from 12 months to six months.
Mrs May survived a confidence vote on December 12th, 200 votes to 117, and under current party rules she cannot be challenged again by MPs until December 2019.
If the motion is supported, chairman Sir Graham “will go and see her and say ‘we are going to change the rules and therefore the six-month period expires on 12 June so you have got till then’,” according to one MP who spoke to The Telegraph anonymously.
In comments to the newspaper, one MP said that Mrs May cannot “superglue herself to Downing Street like the eco-warriors.”
Another said, “The refrain we keep hearing on the doorsteps is ‘she has got to go’.”
Breitbart London reported on Monday that a petition of at least 70 local Conservative Party chairmen will trigger a possible confidence vote in the prime minister, informed by the dissatisfaction of Tory Party members on the ground.
So great is the disillusionment of Tory voters in the current government that 62 per cent have said that they are planning on voting for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in European Parliament elections on May 23rd, while 40 per cent of Tory councillors have said they will also vote for Brexit Party candidates.
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