McVey eyes up No 10 as she tells May: Step down or you’ll lose
A FORMER Cabinet minister last night said Theresa May will have to promise to make a ‘dignified departure’ from Downing Street to get her deal through.
In a blunt intervention, the former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey became the most senior figure so far to warn that the price of winning Eurosceptic support for the Prime Minister’s deal might be her resignation.
Miss McVey, who indicated she will run for the Tory leadership when Mrs May steps down, said the ‘feeble negotiators’ who delivered the deal must not be allowed to oversee the next round of negotiations.
Miss McVey resigned from the Cabinet last year over the deal, but has now said she will vote for it. She told Sky News that Mrs May ‘will have to decide what to do’, adding: ‘What people will be asking for is for those feeble negotiators to go because they cannot take us forward to the next stage.’
She praised the Prime Minister’s ‘dedication’ but, when asked if she should resign, she added: ‘I think that what is best for her is, really only she knows. But what I do know is we as a party want to be able to thank her. She needs a dignified departure, so however that works best for her.’
Miss McVey said the next Tory leader ‘would have to be a Brexiteer’ and the Cabinet would have to be ‘Brexiteer-minded’.
And she made it clear she was ready to throw her hat into the ring when Mrs May indicates she is stepping down. Asked if she would stand, she said: ‘If there were enough people who supported me. If it seemed there was a reasonable chance, I would.’
Meanwhile, Tory MP Charlie Elphicke warned explicitly that his support for the deal depended on ‘a change of leadership’.
Mr Elphicke, a member of the hardline European Research Group, said: ‘What I am clear on is that if we are going to support it, there needs to be a change of negotiating team for the future relationship because there’s no way to be carrying on with Parliament. So I think for me we need to have a change of leadership, and a new face and a new team to take us forward.’
Asked if his vote was ‘ up for grabs’, Mr Elphicke told the BBC: ‘I’m listening carefully, considering carefully about the balance of things. I’m also interested in what the Prime Minister says about how we’re going to take forward the negotiation... so the problems in the withdrawal agreement are not replicated when we actually come to do the future relationship with the EU.’
Mrs May’s former policy chief George Freeman last week called for her to set out a timetable for her departure in the summer. And several Tory MPs have told the Daily Mail privately that a resignation promise could be a ‘game changer’.
One ERG source said: ‘If she doesn’t commit to go then they will not get the votes they need. It is not enough for the whips to hint that she might quit – people need to hear it, in public, from her own mouth.’
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen yesterday said: ‘I’ve been approached by whips offering the PM’s resignation if I vote for her deal.’ But Government sources denied the claim.