Tories rally around May as ‘40 MPs want her out’
SENIOR Tories yesterday dismissed speculation that Theresa May could soon be forced from Downing Street by her MPs.
David Davis and John Redwood rallied round the Prime Minister after claims that dozens of Tories are ready formally to demand her departure.
Yesterday it was reported that 40 Tory MPs have agreed to sign a letter of no confidence in Mrs May.
Although it is not known if that will translate into a Premiership-ending revolt, that is just eight short of the number needed to force a leadership contest.
Some MPs fear Mrs May has become too much of a liability to lead the country out of the EU.
But Brexit Secretary David Davis dismissed speculation about Mrs May. He said: “The Prime Minister will be here right through Brexit. I’m quite certain of it.”
And former Cabinet minister John Redwood, who challenged his then PM John Major in 1995, insisted Mrs May’s situation was quite different from that troubled administration. He said: “This Government has presided over a recovery. The recovery is continuing.”
“At the moment she has very strong support from the Parliamentary party.
“There is no one about to rise up and say they wish to be leader and throw down a challenge.”
Meanwhile, senior Tories were encouraged to recapture the “zealous spirit” of Margaret Thatcher and come up with concrete ideas that voters will love to “save Britain” from a Jeremy Corbyn government.
Tonight former Tory party chairman Lord Saatchi and Graham Brady, chairman of the Tory 1922 Committee, launch a new initiative to showcase policy ideas from newer MPs.
They are the chairman and deputy chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies, which is launching the project.
Mrs May is said to be encouraging, saying it is again time for Tories to win “a battle of ideas” and she is keen to hear fresh ones.
Lord Saatchi and Mr Brady said yesterday that the Tories must follow the example of Baroness Thatcher in the 1970s by working to “not just propagate the right policies” but to secure their acceptance. They warned voters have come to see business as untrustworthy and the free market as failed, leading many to welcome rather than fear the prospect of a hard Left Corbyn government.
It was time to meet today’s challenges “with the same zealous spirit” that Lady Thatcher had shown.
It meant showing that the Tories knew how to fix people’s problems and produce solutions that are “as appealing and encapsulate our principles as perfectly as the sale of council houses back in the ’80s”.
If the party is “to save Britain from a Corbyn government” it must again make the case for free markets, with the kind of “concrete, practical, aspirational policies” that a new generation of MPs is producing.
“Politics is a battle of ideas and at the moment, the wrong ideas are winning,” they warned.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd is addressing the event in what some see as a further signal of her Tory leadership ambitions although one ally strongly denied that was her purpose in speaking there.
‘Politics is a battle of ideas... and the wrong ones are winning’
LORD SAATCHI, who knows a thing or two about winning elections, says the Conservatives must discover “a new zeal” to stop the ill-deserved rise of Jeremy Corbyn. He’s right – but what the party doesn’t need is a new leader.
So the 40 MPs who have allegedly agreed to sign a letter of no confidence in Theresa May are hopelessly deluded if they think anyone other than Brussels will thank them for their treachery.
To misquote a famous Saatchi election slogan: “Tory plotting isn’t working.”
The party does not have a better leader in waiting and the public’s high opinion of Mrs May shows the folly of even thinking of dumping her.
As Lord Saatchi says, the problem is that too many younger voters are taken in by Corbyn’s claptrap. They believe him when he says the free market doesn’t work, capitalism is broken, the rich are screwing the poor.
Worse, they believe Labour has the answers. But constantly warning them of the dangers of a Left-wing government achieves nothing because most would actually welcome it.
The Conservatives need to find policies that appeal, especially on housing. Someone under 30 who sees no prospect of being able to buy a house will understandably blame that on a failure of capitalism.
But not a failure of Theresa May. Will the Febrile Forty please take note.