I’m still the PM!
May insists she’s going nowhere as Labour takes 8-point lead – and plotters urge Davis to topple her
TORY MPs are urging David Davis to challenge Theresa May for the party leadership amid fears the election has left her too weak to deliver Brexit.
The Brexit Secretary has publicly backed the Prime Minister to stay in office and negotiate Britain’s departure from the EU.
Friends insisted yesterday that his loyalty was absolute and flatly denied he was ‘on manoeuvres’, but they acknowledged he was under pressure from Tory MPs, including a number of ministers, to challenge Mrs May before the party conference in October.
A senior Tory said: ‘David is displaying a degree of integrity that is most unusual in our profession, but colleagues are beating a path to his door.
‘They have two primary concerns – they want a PM who can deliver Brexit and someone who can deal with Jeremy Corbyn. David scores highly on both.’
Mrs May insists she will not stand down early, despite intense pressure since losing her Commons majority in last month’s election.
In a fresh blow, a poll gave Labour an eight-point lead over the Tories – enough to put Mr Corbyn in Downing Street. The YouGov poll for The Times put Labour on 46 per cent and the Conservatives on 38.
But talking to reporters at the G20 summit in Hamburg yesterday, Mrs May vowed to pursue a bold agenda and indicated that she wasn’t going anywhere.
The Prime Minister acknowledged the election result ‘didn’t come out as it hoped I would’, but added: ‘ There’s two ways the Government can react to that. We can be very timid and sit back, or we can be bold – and that’s what we are going to be.’
Mrs May said it had been ‘the right decision’ to call last month’s election, despite a disastrous campaign that ended with her forced into a minority government deal with the Democratic Unionist Party.
Asked how the election campaign had affected her person- ally, she replied defiantly: ‘Well, I’m still Prime Minister.’
Questioned on whether other world leaders were taking her seriously, she said: ‘The 19 countries sitting around the table will be listening and will be taking us seriously and will be working with us.’
Chancellor Philip Hammond yesterday urged Tory plotters to focus on government, saying: ‘I expect the public will take the view… that the Government has been elected, it’s formed an administration, and now we should stop navel-gazing and get on with the job in hand, deliver Brexit, get the very best deal we can for Britain.
‘In doing so, we will rebuild our reputation with our public, because we are a party above all else that manages, that delivers. It may not be the most passionate message, but it’s a very important message for people that they have a party in government that is capable, that is competent, that will get on with the job in hand and will deliver.
‘Doing is better than saying. What we now need to do is get on and deliver.’
But some Tories have launched a new bid to persuade Mr Davis to challenge Mrs May. The Brexit Secretary helped persuade her to stay on as Prime Minister immediately after the election when she considered quitting.
Former chief whip Andrew Mit- chell, a close ally of Mr Davis, said yesterday: ‘David has been entrusted with one of the most important Cabinet jobs since the Second World War. I can tell you for a fact he is focusing on that and not on issues for the future.’
Mr Davis was named the most effective Cabinet minister in a poll of Tory activists this week by the website Conservative Home. He got a net satisfaction rating of 78.4 per cent, far ahead of his nearest rivals Michael Gove and Sir Michael Fallon, both on just under 58 per cent.
Mrs May, meanwhile, endured the biggest fall in popularity ever recorded by the survey. Her approval rating fell from 89.1 per cent before the election to -26.1.
‘We should stop navel-gazing’