‘May will lead Britain to 2020 and beyond’

Transport Secretary tells Gordon Rayner that Tories speculating over next PM will let the country down

THERESA MAY will remain Prime Minister until at least 2020 and could even fight another general election, one of her Cabinet colleagues has predicted.

Chris Grayling, the Transport Secretary, is confident Mrs May will fight on once Brexit has been achieved in March 2019 because she “commands the overwhelming support of the Con- servative Party”.

If he is proved right, it increases the chances of a fresh face in the party emerging from the backbenches to succeed her, as David Cameron did in 2005, just four years after becoming an MP.

As Mrs May’s campaign manager during her successful 2016 leadership bid, Mr Grayling is one of her most loyal Cabinet ministers.

But his comments chime with opinions expressed by the 1922 Committee of backbench MPS, whose leader has insisted there is no appetite for a leadership election.

Other members of the committee have responded with anger to the backbiting and leaking over the past fortnight by senior Cabinet ministers with designs on the leadership, and have told them they are “yesterday’s men” who will never be chosen as leader.

Mr Grayling’s comments will give succour to MPS elected in 2010, 2015 and 2017 who believe the next leader should come from among their ranks to give the party a fresh start, rather than choosing the likes of Boris Johnson, Philip Hammond or David Davis.

The longer Mrs May stays in power, the longer new MPS will have to build the experience and support they need for a future leadership bid.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph in his office at the Department for Transport, Mr Grayling was asked whether he thought Mrs May would still be Prime Minister in 2020, rather than being forced out after Brexit in 2019, as had been widely assumed.

He said: “I absolutely want her to be and I think she will be. We had a disappointing election result but we still won the election. She got a share of the vote that no Conservative leader has had since the Eighties. We have a duty to deliver a stable government for the country to take us through Brexit and beyond, so I am absolutely behind Theresa May.” While most Tories privately believe Mrs May has no chance of fighting another election after a poor campaign that cost her parliamentary majority, Mr Grayling said it should not be ruled out.

He said: “Who knows? We’ll see further down the road what happens, but ultimately I think it will be her choice, as it should be for any prime minister about how long they want to serve. I don’t want to see us spending the next few years embroiled in debates about the leadership of the country or the Conservative Party. We’ve got a job to do, we’ve got to deliver Brexit, we’ve got to keep the economy moving forward and if we spend the next one, two, three, four, five years constantly discussing who the next PM is going to be it’s just going to let the country down.”

Mr Grayling claimed there had been “a lot of exaggeration” about the extent of the row between his various Cabinet colleagues, but urged them to “get on with the job”.

As the man in charge of Britain’s road, rail and airport networks, Mr Grayling watches over the country’s biggest engineering projects, including HS2 and Crossrail. But he is also someone who always commutes in standard class from his Epsom constituency in Surrey to London. His dream, like so many predecessors, is to create a railway network where everyone has a seat and all trains run on time.

He accepts that he has no “magic wand” to make it happen, but will start by using technology to speed up existing trains. He said HS2, as well as longer trains, would provide extra capacity that will ease overcrowding, but electric trains and new technology would enable trains to travel between stations faster and spend less time on platforms, meaning extra trains could be squeezed onto the timetable at busy times.

New technology including digital signalling would cut down on time wasted, he said, freeing up the timetables. He is also aiming to introduce smart ticketing around the country.

His ultimate aim is to include an automatic “delay repay” system so that anyone whose train was delayed by more than 15 minutes would have a compensation payment charged back onto their card the next time they travelled.

Earlier this week he announced the final route of the northern section of HS2, which will involve the demolition of 16 homes on an estate that was built only six years ago. Some home owners found out just weeks after moving into their properties. Mr Grayling said he was “really sorry” for the residents of the Shimmer estate in Mexborough, promising they would receive compensation, but accepted that his job involves making tough decisions that have a “human consequence”.

He said: “There is no way that any nation can ever do important infrastructure schemes without having an effect on someone and I know that when we take decisions as politicians we do it in the knowledge that there’s a human consequence.

“But ultimately if we didn’t take those decisions we wouldn’t move forward as a nation, we wouldn’t be able to do the difficult things or the big things that we need for the future. I take these decisions with a deep knowledge that this is going to hurt some people badly.”