Hunt throws down the gauntlet
Foreign Secretary tells May she must give up on her Brexit Bill as vote is cancelled
THERESA MAY must finally confront reality today after Jeremy Hunt withdrew his support for her last-chance Brexit Bill.
The Foreign Secretary made it clear to the Prime Minister in a meeting yesterday that she must abandon the deeply unpopular plan on which her hopes of survival rested.
Mrs May had agreed to announce the timetable of her departure after a vote on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill next month but after she cancelled that vote yesterday her reason for remaining as Tory leader evaporated.
It leaves the Prime Minister cornered as she prepares this morning to meet Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, her most senior backbencher, to discuss her future.
Mrs May could announce her resignation as party leader as soon as today, allowing a contest to elect her successor to begin early next month. If she does, she would remain as Prime Minister until a new Tory leader is elected, meaning she would almost certainly hand over the keys to Downing Street before the end of July.
Sources close to Mrs May insisted last night she had not indicated whether she had made a final decision but allies have told her she must not delay any longer. They said waiting even until Monday, when the results of the European elections are known, would give the impression she had been forced out by Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party.
An announcement outside No 10 could come after Mrs May meets Sir Graham this morning, when it will be made clear that if she does not resign she will be removed within days.
One ally of the Prime Minister said offering a vote on a second referendum to break the deadlock “hasn’t worked”.
“She had already agreed to meet Sir Graham next month to agree a timetable for her departure but the events of this week appear to have brought that moment forward,” said the source.
When Mrs May does resign, a Tory leadership contest is expected to begin on June 10, avoiding clashes with Donald Trump’s state visit and D-day commemorations the previous week.
With Parliament in recess next week, Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove are among the candidates who will be ramping up their efforts to win the endorsement of MPS, who will later whittle down the field to two through a series of knockout votes.
Party sources said last night they expected the process to take less than a week, allowing the final contenders a month for hustings events around the country before a winner is chosen in late July.
Mrs May had suffered a backlash from within her party this week after inserting a clause into the Brexit “divorce” Bill giving MPS a legally binding vote on whether to hold a second referendum, something Cabinet ministers insisted they had not agreed.
She began yesterday playing for time, suggesting to ministers she would postpone the Bill and rewrite it so she could push ahead with a vote next month. But Mr Hunt told her to pull the Bill altogether, leaving Mrs May facing a collapse in Cabinet support after the resignation of Andrea Leadsom on Wednesday night. Mr Hunt made clear that “loyal colleagues” should not be forced to back the Bill.
Mr Javid stated in a separate meeting that he could not vote for the Bill in its current form. Penny Mordaunt, the Defence Secretary, and David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, are understood to have given her similar messages in phone calls on Wednesday night.
Mrs May was forced to abandon plans to publish the Bill today and removed it from the parliamentary schedule, and because she had pegged the timetable of her departure to a vote on the Bill, it left her with no reason to stay.
One Whitehall source said: “She has been listening to what ministers have to say. Ultimately, she is the only person who knows what she is going to do.”
She spent yesterday afternoon in Maidenhead before voting in the European elections at 4pm in her home village of Sonning, Berks.
IF THERESA MAY had held any hope that her Brexit deal – and her administration – could survive, it was dispelled in the space of an hour yesterday.
At 11am Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, met the Prime Minister in Downing Street and made clear that he and other members of the Cabinet could not support the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. The tone of the meeting was said to be respectful, but the message was brutal. Mr Hunt told the Prime Minister that she should pull her agreement entirely.
The legislation, which paves the way for a legally binding second referendum, was a step too far and loyal colleagues should not be forced to go through voting lobbies to back it.
Half an hour later, the Prime Minister met Sajid Javid, her Home Secre- tary. The message from Mr Javid, who has clashed with Mrs May more than anyone else in the Cabinet, was just as blunt.
He warned Mrs May that he personally could not vote for her deal and said it went significantly further than what had been agreed at the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. He was left with the clear impression, however, that she was not prepared to go immediately.
Both men – who are likely candidates for the Tory leadership – were careful not to ask her directly if she was going to quit.
Mr Hunt even used a speech at the National Security Centre that morning to say that the Prime Minister would still be in place for Donald Trump’s state visit in just over a week’s time.
“Theresa May will be Prime Minister to welcome him and rightly so,” he said.
However, for the Prime Minister, the message from Mr Hunt and Mr Javid could not have been clearer. The death of her deal effectively meant the death of her administration.
Downing Street, in the meantime, did everything it could to make it appear as if it was business as usual.
It did not succeed. The sense of chaos engulfing the final days of Mrs May’s Government continued when Mark Spencer, a Tory whip, was asked to fill in as Leader of the Commons in the wake of the resignation of Andrea Leadsom over the Prime Minister’s deal.
As he read out the order of business for the week, it became clear that the game was up.
The Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which Downing Street had earlier this week insisted would be published today, would now be delayed until the week of June 3 following recess.
The second reading of the Bill had disappeared entirely from the order of business.
Mr Spencer added to the sense of confusion by telling MPS that the Government wanted to conduct the second reading on Friday June 7, but had failed to reach agreement with Labour. Tory ministers and MPS did not buy it.
Still, the Downing Street machine ploughed on. Shortly after 1pm, Mrs May announced a mini-reshuffle that promoted Mel Stride, a Treasury minister, to Leader of the Commons in place of Mrs Leadsom.
It meant that Mr Spencer’s time in the role had lasted for just two hours and 12 minutes.
Even the appointment of Mr Stride was greeted with suspicion. He has been orchestrating the leadership campaign of Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, for months and hosting dinners at his home in a bid to whip up support. One MP who attended a recent dinner said: “There was sushi and drinks all night.”
The MP, who backs another leadership contender, said Mr Stride was a heavyweight, describing him as the “Rolls-royce of politics”.
In the afternoon, the Prime Minister returned to Sonning, Berks, to cast her vote in the European elections. She and her husband, Philip, appeared relaxed and were smiling as they left the polling station together shortly after 5pm.
In Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s aides left early to enjoy the evening sun ahead of what was expected to be a long day.
Earlier they had been told that Gavin Barwell, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, had convened a meeting of No10 special advisers for 10am today.
It appeared to be timed to coincide with a meeting between Sir Graham Brady, the head of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPS, and the Prime Minister.
Sir Graham is expected to tell Mrs May that if she does not resign by June 10, she will face the prospect of her MPS forcing her out through a confidence vote.
Executive members of the 1922 Committee held a secret vote on Wednesday night on whether to change party rules to allow for an immediate ballot on her future.
Cabinet ministers said that they fully expected that the Prime Minister would announce her departure today. “It’s the end of May,” one said.