Davis ‘has 30 MPs backing him as leader’
PM’s allies can put talk of leadership down to ‘warm Prosecco’, but practicalities are being discussed
THIRTY Tory MPs have said they would back David Davis if he ran for the leadership, allies of the Brexit Secretary have claimed to The Sunday Telegraph.
Leading supporters of Mr Davis said he had been inundated with messages of support and encouragement after Theresa May’s election flop last month.
Two former cabinet ministers told this newspaper they personally pledged loyalty to Mr Davis in the past fortnight amid hopes he would take over as Prime Minister.
One said Mrs May should consider whether she was best placed to deliver Brexit, while another said Mr Davis’s humble roots left him well placed to lead a fightback against Labour.
“He has a lot of people saying, ‘You are the guy who can deliver on Brexit and deliver on Corbyn’,” said a wellplaced Tory MP. “What he has, like Corbyn, is genuine authenticity. David is the pre-eminent example of social mobility in the Tory party.”
Mr Davis, who has returned to frontline politics after being handed the Brexit brief by Mrs May, has said in public and private that he is not seeking the leadership. However, his supporters within Parliament believe Mrs May could be made to leave before Christmas if a party of backbenchers said they wanted her gone. Any coup would be unlikely to take place before the October party conference.
IT WAS the kind of moment Westminster watchers love. Across a sea of suited politicos and glasses full of Pol Roger, Boris Johnson and David Davis locked eyes.
The scene was The Spectator’s summer party; the backdrop, endless speculation the Foreign Secretary and Brexit Secretary want the top job if Theresa May goes.
“You’re hopeless!” cried Mr Davis as he approached his supposed leadership rival across the garden behind the magazine’s office. The remark was aimed at Mr Johnson but referenced his sister Rachel, the journalist who caused a splash by joining the Liberal Democrats and was standing nearby.
Rachel, it turned out, had still not gone back to the Tories. “He couldn’t even convince his sister,” joked Mr Davis. The inference – so what about voters? – was left unsaid.
For No 10, this is exactly the type of excitable speculation they detest. Westminster’s summer drinks dos, where journalists and insiders trade gossip and theories of the future, allowing everything to be over analysed. Leadership rumblings, in the eyes of Mrs May’s allies, can be put down to a handful of malcontents enjoying “too much sun and warm Prosecco”.
Their argument by now is well known: No Tory wants another election, changing leader would trigger a brutal civil war, plus which contender really wants the poisoned chalice of Brexit talks? But a chunk of backbenchers – possibly more sizeable than Mrs May’s supporters would care to admit – think the situation is increasingly untenable. “The rider is plonked on top of the horse at the moment,” said a former cabinet minister about the state of the Prime Minister’s leadership.
“The reins are loose, it’s galloping off and there’s not control. We need someone who can grab control, ride the horse and address the two fundamental issues we face: Corbyn and Brexit.”
Mrs May hopes the race to replace her will not start properly until March 2019, the date of Brexit completion. But judging by the movements of her Cabinet, the starting gun has already gone off.
This week, Philip Hammond, the newly energised Chancellor, hosted Tory MPs in his parliamentary office. Next week it is the turn of Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary. Mr Davis has already had a Eurosceptic soirée while Andrea Leadsom, the Commons leader, is said to be battling whips to hold regular meetings in the tea rooms.
Even the youngsters are at it. Rory Stewart, the much-tipped Foreign Office minister, has invited colleagues for nibbles in a fellow MP’s office this week.
The Prime Minister herself is not blind to the need to shore up support. On Monday night, Mrs May – by instinct not a worker of the Commons corridors – spent more than an hour talking to MPs in Parliament’s Smoking Room.
Parliament rises this week and with it a chance for Tory MPs to catch their breath – meaning any coup is unlikely in the coming weeks.
Yet for plotters, the long summer to come offers a chance to organise. “Everybody’s pretty tired at the moment,” said a leading May critic. “But once they’ve been away for a few days they’ll buck up and continue talking.”
Discussion among the disaffected has now turned to method. Letters are one route. If close to 50 Tory MPs send no confidence letters to the 1922 com- mittee chairman Graham Brady it triggers a contest. But other MPs have another plan in mind – sending a delegation of backbenchers to Mrs May and asking her to name a date. “Clearly she has to go. It’s absolutely crazy to be there having created this balls-up,” said a former minister.
In their favour, the plotters point to what Mrs May told her own backbenchers after the election – that she would serve as long as they wanted.
Twenty Tory MPs – three times the rebels needed to block any legislation – is the going number for how big the party would need to be.
Then there is the question of timing. October, Tory party conference month, is the next big date on the diary. But even a show of support there may not be enough. “The history of Iain Duncan Smith is that the party rallies round at the conference and then afterwards people read the tea leaves,” said a Tory MP of the former party leader.
Mr Duncan Smith declared at the 2003 conference amid leadership speculation that “the quiet man is here to stay and he’s turning up the volume”. He was gone within the month.
Some believe Mrs May must be gone by the end of the year. “You need to get it all done and dusted by Christmas,” said a Tory critic. That would allow a clean run at Brexit talks in 2018.
But that seems a long way away. A summer of scheming waits as Parliament rises, but no two MPs can agree on where the party will be come autumn.
Mrs May knows her future is now dependent on Tory MPs – described by one as the “most devious and cunning electorate in the world”. It is they who will determine whether the Boris-Davis showdown glimpsed behind closed doors this week will ever play out for real in public.