A
devastating election and a high-profile speech strewn with mishaps have
ignited a leadership crisis for British Prime Minister Theresa May at a
critical time as Brexit negotiators push for a deal in Brussels.
A
plot by a group of Conservative MPs to oust May was exposed on Friday,
reviving memories of the backstabbing that led to Margaret Thatcher’s
ouster in 1990.
Many colleagues publicly condemned the attempt and
backed their leader, but the Sunday Times reported that at least three
Cabinet ministers had discussed the need to replace her this week.
Parliament
returns today and May is expected to announce a number of policy
initiatives in a bid to reassert her authority, while there are also
rumours of a Cabinet reshuffle.
But she will also need some progress in the deadlocked Brexit negotiations which resume today.
The
prime minister has struggled since June when her gamble in calling an
election to cement her power backfired spectacularly and she lost her
parliamentary majority.
For many Conservatives, it is now a question
of when, not if, she steps down ahead of the next election in 2022 – and
the date most often mentioned is 2019, when Britain is expected to
leave the European Union.
“Getting rid of her is like going to the
dentist,” a government minister was quoted by The Sun as saying. “You
keep putting it off because it’s going to be painful but you know you
have to do it eventually.”
There have been reports of bitter
divisions for weeks and speculation has swirled over whether Foreign
Secretary Boris Johnson might mount a leadership bid after his contrary
interventions in the Brexit debate.
Johnson pledged his loyalty to
the prime minister this weekend, but his erratic behaviour has drawn
widespread criticism and accusations of betrayal.
Other potential
successors include Home Secretary Amber Rudd, while Brexit Secretary
David Davis and First Secretary of State Damian Green are seen as
possible place-holders until after Brexit.
Newspaper reports
yesterday suggested that May is considering a reshuffle of her Cabinet
in which she would promote a younger generation of MPs.
“Part of my
job is to make sure I always have the best people in my Cabinet, to make
the most of the wealth of talent available to me in the party,” she
told the Sunday Times.
The paper said Johnson could be demoted in the
reshuffle, which it said was planned for after the European summit on
October 19 and 20.
Britain had hoped EU leaders would use that
meeting to agree to the next stage of talks on future Britain-EU trade
ties, but this seems unlikely.
EU officials say Britain has so far
not made sufficient progress on preliminary negotiations centring on the
divorce bill, despite May’s push for a breakthrough with her Florence
speech last month.
Thwarted in Brussels, May had hoped to revive her
fortunes at last week’s party conference. But her keynote speech was
disrupted by a serial prankster who handed her an end of employment
form, and she then suffered a series of coughing fits that made her
combative message barely audible.
The sense of chaos only heightened
when letters from the slogan “Building a Country that Works for
Everyone” started falling off the board behind her.
“The sense that
this cannot go on may now overwhelm her,” wrote Times columnist Philip
Collins, one of a growing number of commentators saying that the
leadership crisis has finally come to a head.
Pro-Brexit MPs do not
want another leadership election to slow down the process, and there are
fears the lack of party unity could hand power to opposition Labour
leader Jeremy Corbyn.
But Iain Begg, a politics professor at the
London School of Economics, said the current climate had “an echo” of
the 1990 demise of Thatcher at the hands of Conservative plotters.
That
ouster was in turn followed by recriminations over Europe in the 1990s
under John Major that eventually led to Labour’s Tony Blair taking
office in 1997.
“If the wind goes against Theresa May she could be
finished by as early as next week. But if the Cabinet is behind her, she
will survive,” he said.
British Prime Minister Theresa May to announce policy initiatives in a bid to reassert her authority.