May is dismissed as a ‘dead woman walking’
Prime Minister faces showdown with Tory backbench MPS today Cabinet reshuffle underlines her weakness as Gove is brought back Jeremy Corbyn says another general election would be ‘a good thing’
Theresa May has been branded a “dead woman walking” ahead of a crunch meeting with Conservative backbenchers to argue she should keep her job after her election disaster.
Critics within her party claimed the Prime Minister was “flawed” and would be replaced before the end of the year, but a defiant Mrs May claimed she would see out her fiveyear term.
She will go before the powerful Conservative backbench 1922 Committee today to face angry MPS for the first time since the election. In another crucial showdown today, Mrs May will seek cabinet approval for a controversial deal with the Democratic Unionist Party, which some of her own MPS have condemned.
The development comes as:
The Prime Minister reshuffled her cabinet, bringing arch rival Michael Gove back into government in a bid to shore up her position
Battle lines were drawn within the Conservatives over Ruth Davidson’s calls for the party to reconsider its Brexit stance
The Irish prime minister called Mrs May to voice concern over the impact of a deal with the DUP on the Northern Irish peace process
A poll suggested almost half of people want the Prime Minister to resign. Mrs May named a largely unchanged cabinet yesterday in a further demonstration of her diminished power, but made a major concession to her critics by bringing Mr Gove back into government less than a year after she sacked him.
The former education and justice
secretary will take charge of the Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, handling key aspects of the UK’S post-brexit settlement such as farm subsidies.
In another move aimed at bolstering her minority government, Mrs May made her close ally Damian Green the First Secretary of State as well as Minister for the Cabinet Office, giving him a role similar to that of a deputy prime minister.
She insisted she was “getting on with the job” despite facing calls to resign from within her party.
There was confusion over the weekend after Downing Street claimed a “confidence and supply” deal with the DUP allowing the Conservatives to govern as a minority had been agreed only for the Northern Irish unionists to insist late on Saturday night that talks had yet to conclude.
Jeremy Corbyn condemned the attempt to prop up a minority Conservative administration with unionist votes as “chaotic”, and said Labour would put forward an amendment to the government’s programme in the Queen’s Speech next week in a bid to collapse Mrs May’s administration.
The Labour leader predicted there would be a general election within the next year, and said: “We’re ready any time”.
DUP leader Arlene Foster will visit Downing Street tomorrow with the aim of finalising an agreement to support the government.
Former chancellor George Osborne claimed it was a matter of time before the Prime Minister was ousted, while Conservative MP Anna Soubry said Mrs May would be out of power by the end of the year.
“I think we will know very shortly. We could easily get to the middle of next week and it all collapses for her,” said Mr Osborne, who now edits the London Evening Standard after being sacked by Mrs May. “She is a dead woman walking and the only question is how long she remains on death row.”
Ms Soubry, who called on the Prime Minister to “consider her position” on election night, claimed Mrs May would go “in due course”.
The former minister said: “We don’t want her to go now, we want a period of stability.”
However, she added that she thought a new leader would be in place “before the end of the year”.
“She’s flawed, she’s in a desperate situation, and I’m afraid that her situation is untenable, and I think she knows that.”
Former cabinet minister Nicky Morgan, who was also sacked by Mrs May, predicted there could be a leadership challenge over the summer. “I think it’s fairly clear Theresa May cannot lead us into another election – of course, we don’t know when that’s going to happen, and I don’t think we should rush that,” she told ITV’S Peston on Sunday.
“But I do think if we’re going to have a leadership contest in the Conservative Party, what we cannot do is have another coronation like last summer.”
Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, said he did not believe there was any mood among Conservative MPS for a leadership contest that would create fresh instability.
But Mr Brady acknowledged there was anger within the party at Mrs May’s failure to express regret for Tory MPS who lost their seats when she returned to No 10 on Friday.
He confirmed that he had raised the issue with her before she gave an interview later that afternoon in which she said she was “sorry” for what had happened to them.
“I think that there is zero appetite amongst the public for another general election at the moment and I don’t detect any great appetite amongst my colleagues for presenting the public with an additional dose of uncertainty by getting involved in a rather self-indulgent Conservative Party election campaign,” Mr Brady told the BBC’S Sunday Politics.
Mr Brady said the loss of their Commons majority meant much of their election manifesto would be abandoned and that Mrs May would have to present a “slimmed down” Queen’s Speech.
“There is no point in sailing ahead with items that were in the manifesto that we won’t get through parliament,” he said.
Mrs May suffered the devastating blow over the weekend of being forced to sacrifice her two closest aides to stave off a snap leadership challenge.
The Prime Minister’s cochiefs of staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, resigned after being blamed for the Conservative election campaign and running a bullying, insular Downing Street operation.
Mrs May has been forced to overhaul her leadership style, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon confirmed.
“We are going to see, I hope, more collective decision-making in the cabinet,” Mr Fallon told the Andrew Marr Show. “I and other senior colleagues have made that clear to her.