Tepid Tories fail to back May leadership for 2022 election
THERESA MAY’S plan to lead the Conservatives into the next election was given a lukewarm response by two of her ministers yesterday as it emerged she ignored warnings from strategists about the danger of calling a snap poll.
David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, and Greg Hands, a trade minister, failed to give Mrs May a ringing endorsement to fight the next election as Tory leader.
Mr Davis was asked on the BBC’S Andrew Marr Show on Sunday if his heart had lifted when Mrs May said she wanted to fight again, but he would not be drawn on her long-term future. He said: “She is a great Prime Minister, I think. I have served her for the last 12 months, I have been never anything less than impressed in the way she runs the country. That’s what matters. That’s what matters to the people. Not the politics, running the country, and she does a good job.”
Mr Hands said the PM was doing a “fantastic job” but also would not comment on whether Mrs May will still be in charge at the next scheduled general election in 2022. He told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics: “I’m expecting it to be a five-year parliament, and five years is a long time in politics.
“I think the Prime Minister is doing, at the moment, a fantastic job, it’s a very, very big job at the moment – a lot going on domestically, the Brexit negotiations. She is doing a good job and has got my complete confidence.”
Any reservations held by Tory MPS about the PM continuing long into the future are likely to be made stronger by the leaked memo. Sir Lynton Crosby, the Tories’ campaign guru, warned the PM the election came with “a lot of risk”. The memo, written just days before Mrs May announced her decision to go to the country, said voters did not want the uncertainty an election would cause. The document, seen by The Daily Telegraph, cautioned that there were “exceptionally high expectations” that the Tories would win, which was leading voters to believe they could vote for whoever they wanted “secure in the knowledge that Jeremy Corbyn will not be Prime Minister”.