Key supporter quits, but May is defiant
KEY BACKER QUITS, MPs DEMAND SHE QUIT OVER BREXIT BILL
LONDON • Theresa May was bunkered down in Downing Street Wednesday night as her ministers turned on her and prominent Brexit supporter Andrea Leadsom resigned from cabinet.
The British prime minister was accused of shutting herself in with “the sofa against the door” after she refused to meet Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Homes Secretary Sajid Javid, who were expected to confront her over her “disastrous” new Brexit deal.
Ministers and backbenchers told her she had “run out of road” and spent the day urging her to quit before polls open in European Parliament elections Thursday, in the hope it would limit the scale of the expected Tory defeat.
An eve of election poll put the party at just seven per cent, which would potentially deliver its worst ever election result. However, May was still clinging to power after a day in which she had faced three separate plots to oust her.
The pressure on her increased dramatically with the resignation of Leadsom, the leader of the House.
Leadsom said she could not “fulfil my duty” by proposing a Brexit bill that “I fundamentally oppose.”
With a clear plea to May to quit, she said: “I now urge you to make the right decisions in the interests of the country, this government and our party.”
May will come under renewed pressure to resign Thursday when a succession of cabinet ministers troop into No. 10 to say they cannot support her Brexit plan.
She has also agreed to meet Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, on Friday to discuss her future.
“The sofa is up against the door. She’s not leaving. She is like a female version of Gordon Brown: needing to be got rid of but locked in the bunker and refusing to go. Her deal is dead but she is stubbornly playing for time,” said Iain Duncan Smith, who led the Conservative Party from 2001 to 2003.
Another Tory MP said: “We’ve got to change the rules to get her out. Who does she think she is? Imelda Marcos?”
Support for May from some members of her cabinet evaporated after ministers were shown a draft version of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which laid out a path to a legally binding second referendum. She plans to put the bill to a vote in June.
If Parliament rejected her deal, she said, “all we have before us is division and deadlock.”
Lawmakers have already rejected May’s divorce deal with the 27 other EU countries three times, and Britain’s long-scheduled departure date of March 29 passed with the country still in the bloc.
Opposition Labour Party lawmakers dismissed the latest offer as too little too late, and pro-Brexit Conservatives accused her of capitulating to pro-EU demands.
More than 70 Tory MPs, including leadership rivals Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, have now said they will vote against May’s Bill, meaning she is on course for a 150-vote defeat.
Even supporters of the deal have urged her to pull it, but the government insists it will be published.
May had already agreed to announce the timetable of her departure after a vote on the bill in the first week of June, but with the bill seemingly doomed, Brexiteers said there was no point in May staying on a single day longer.
However, of the three separate plots to oust May Wednesday, none managed to land a decisive blow.
In refusing to see any cabinet ministers until Thursday, May bought herself a precious extra few hours.
Middle-ranking ministers made clear to the Chief Whip, Julian Smith, that they would resign en masse if May went ahead with the vote on her bill, but it left her unmoved. Meanwhile the 1922 Committee met to discuss changing party rules so a fresh vote of confidence in her leadership could be held just six months after the last one, but it postponed a decision until Friday. As Sir Graham is to meet May Friday, it has led to speculation that she could choose that as the time to announce her resignation. Loyalists are now said to be urging May to quit with dignity, rather than suffering the humiliation of being forced out.
One minister told The Telegraph that 200 Tory MPs would vote against May if the rules were changed. Cabinet sources speculated that she could announce her departure in a “podium moment” outside 10 Downing St. on Monday, following the expected disaster at the European Parliament elections.
Some Tory MPs believe that if May can survive until the end of this week she will buy herself another fortnight, as Parliament will be in recess next week, making it more difficult to organize a coup against her.
However, with President Donald Trump paying a state visit that week, May would face humiliation if she was forced to resign in the middle of such an important event.