‘Good morning, please don’t dump me yet’

Theresa May promised her party she would quit as Tory leader before the next election in a desperate plea to save her job.

British Prime Minister Theresa May told Tory colleagues it was a ‘very, very bad time to replace the prime minister’. Picture: AP

Theresa May promised her party she would quit as Tory leader befor­e the next election in a desper­ate 10-minute plea to save her job, an hour before MPs ­decided her fate.

“In my heart I would love to lead us into the next election but I know that you want a different leader, with new objectives,” she told a packed meeting of the 1922 committee.

As she had outside No 10 Downing Street more than eight hours before, the Prime Minister spoke about her longstanding commitment to the Conservative Party and stressed her desire to rebuil­d the fractured relationship with the Democratic Unionist Party, her parliamentary allies.

Her most important message, according to party deputy chairma­n James Cleverly, was that now was “a very, very bad time to replace the prime minister”. In the only sign of jangling nerves, she opened her address by wishing the MPs a “good morning”.

Mrs May spoke for about 10 minutes but the hostile questioning from Conservative MPs lasted much longer.

Lee Rowley, 37, who won the Brexit-voting seat of North East Derbyshire from Labour last June, demanded that Mrs May set out “point by point” how she was “going to save my seat at the next election”. He added: “Stamina is not a policy, Prime Minister.”

Mrs May did not take up his offer, those in the room said.

Adam Holloway, the MP for Gravesham, challenged Mrs May on her pledge not to lead the party to another election, given that winning a vote of confidence would mean she could not be challenged for a further 12 months. Mrs May assured him that she would not be calling a snap election.

Some MPs were unimpressed by her answers on no-deal plannin­g. David Davies, the MP for Monmouth, complained about insufficient preparations for ­Brit­ain’s crashing out of the EU. Steve Double, the MP for St Austell & Newquay, asked Mrs May if there was anything over the past two years she would have done differently.

“I will keep negotiating to get us away from today,” was her reply.

Conservative vice-chairman Paul Scully told Mrs May that while he was a Brexiteer he would give her “the benefit of the doubt”. He demanded that she change her approach to the negotiations, and put Crawford Falconer, the Departm­ent for International Trade’s senior negotiator, at the centre of talks with the EU.

THE TIMES