British Prime Minister Theresa May has again faced calls to resign but has brushed them off, insisting the disintegration of the Conservative party and the failure to deliver Brexit aren’t her fault.
After Sir Graham Brady, the Conservative boss who represents non-government Tory MPs went to the prime minister on Tuesday to ask her to set a firm departure timetable — a request that has as of yet gone unheeded — May faced a series of more direct challenges Wednesday, including from a leadership rival, and an urgent call to resign in the debating chamber from her own benches.
Tory backbench Brexiteer Andrea Jenkyns used her turn to speak during the weekly questions and answers session in the House of Commons to tell May she had lost the confidence of the country and must go, an accusation that May flatly rejected.
Jenkyns said: “Could I say to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister that she has tried her best. Nobody could fault or doubt her commitment and sense of duty, but she has failed. She has failed to deliver on her promises and we have lost 1,300 hardworking councillors.
“Sadly the public no longer trusts her to run the Brexit negotiations. Isn’t it time to stand aside, and let someone new run our party, our country, and the negotiations?”
Clearly frustrated by the attack on her leadership, May expressed her regret at the significant defeat inflicted upon the Conservative party by voters last week, which has been broadly interpreted in Westminster as a damning indictment of the party’s inability to deliver Brexit, but refused to take the blame. May responded that: “I’m sorry we saw so many good Conservative councillors lose their seats last week, very often through no fault of their own.
“…this is not an issue about me, and it isn’t an issue about her. If this were an issue about me and how I vote, we would have already left the European Union.”
While the prime minister believes she isn’t responsible for the crisis facing Britain’s oldest political party, she may struggle to find many who agree with her. She is the first Tory leader to face a grassroots vote of no confidence in 185 years, and after the worst local election defeat for the party in a quarter of a century, it was revealed that 82 per cent of party members want her to resign.
Amid swirling rumours of an attempt to remove her from office this week, it was even claimed her remaining senior supporters were considering taking their own political colleagues to court to prevent the changes necessary to force her from post.
Jenkyn’s attack closely followed another challenge to May’s leadership by another Andrea — this time Andrea Leadsom. She is the former leadership contender who was the final surviving candidate challenging her for the leadership in 2016, when David Cameron stood down over his failure to ensure a remain vote in the Brexit referendum.
Speaking to UK breakfast television, leader of the House of Commons Leadsom said that while she had supported the prime minister over the past three years to achieve a Brexit deal, she believed the best solution was a no deal Brexit, and was considering challenging for the leadership again to deliver it.
The Times reports her remarks to Good Morning Britain TV, “… if you’d had a determined Brexiteer [as Prime Minister] I suspect things might have been different — we might have been out by now on World Trade Organization terms… [I am] disgusted at the fact that nearly three years on and we still haven’t left the EU.”
Setting out her stall to be leader post-Theresa May, Leadsom said: “I’ve always felt that no-deal would not be ideal for the country. Right now, I would be prepared to have no-deal. I think the country is very well prepared for that.”
Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook
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