Pressure grows as Cabinet colleagues fail to back PM

SENIOR members of Theresa May’s Cabinet yesterday refused to publicly back her remaining Prime Minister for the long term.

Chancellor Philip Hammond and Commons leader Andrea Leadsom declined to say how long they believed she could stay in Number 10.

Asked how much time Mrs May had left, Mr Hammond told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘I think what the country needs now is a period of calm … Theresa is leading the Government and I think the Government needs to get on with its job.’ Mrs Leadsom, who challenged Mrs May for the leadership last year before pulling out of the race, also refused to be drawn on the PM’s future.

Asked when the right time for Mrs May to go would be, Mrs Leadsom told BBC One’s Sunday Politics: ‘You can’t see into the future. We have seen a lot of change in recent weeks and months.

‘The Prime Minister has done a fantastic job in bringing the country back to a good place … She is absolutely determined to continue and she has the backing of her party.’ Mrs Leadsom sidestepped a question over whether Mrs May would lead the party into the next election.

Asked if she herself would run for leader again, she replied: ‘I’m completely backing Theresa May as our Prime Minister.’

London minister Greg Hands dismissed reports Tory MPs had given Mrs May ten days to save her position, telling Sky News’s Sophy Ridge the party is ‘united’ in its sup- port of the PM. In a reference to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith added: ‘You look into the abyss and it grins back at you with a short- cropped grey beard and very Marxist ideology.

‘We don’t want to see that govern Britain and therefore we have to get stable behind the Prime Minister and make sure at the end of it all she has the strength and the focus to go on and govern.’

Theresa May has reportedly held prayer sessions with the Archbishop of Canterbury as she seeks spiritual guidance. The Prime Minister was said to find the meetings with Justin Welby a ‘great comfort’, according to the Sun on Sunday. It is not thought the pair have met since the general election.