PM’s plea for unity ‘for sake of the nation’

THERESA May last night urged Tories to stop squabbling and ‘stand together in the national interest’.

Following another day of in-fighting over Brexit, she told supporters at a Conservative fundraiser in London: ‘The stakes are high. Perhaps higher than we have ever known in our political lifetimes. We each have a choice to make. Will we come together and stand together as a party, as a government and as a country?’

The Prime Minister challenged her colleagues to find the boldness and courage to ‘unite as one for the good of our nation’, asking: ‘Will we be divided and allow the scale of the challenge, the complexity of the questions to overwhelm us?’

Mrs May said she wanted to see the UK standing as a ‘independent’ and ‘outward-looking’ nation, that would forge a ‘new economic settlement and security partnership with Europe’.

She continued: ‘Today in the House of Commons, Jeremy Corbyn said to me, it is time for me to take a side – and I said I had taken the side of British people.

‘Once again it is time for this party to stand together in the national interest. To be inspired by our past to strike boldly into the future. It is our mission and we will fulfil it.’