Tory party on verge of leadership contest after disastrous conference performance by May
By
Robert Stevens
7 October 2017
After months of speculation over a leadership challenge against Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May following her disastrous general election campaign in June, the phony war has turned into a real one.
Just hours after May addressed the party’s annual conference on Wednesday, it was revealed that former party chairman Grant Shapps has gathered around 30 Tory MPs, including five ex-cabinet ministers, to support a leadership contest.
Shapps stated that the 30 include a “broad spectrum” of the party, including “Eurosceptics” and MPs who favour remaining in the European Union’s Single Market. He is an influential figure in the party, chairing it between 2012 and 2015. He told the BBC, “I don’t think we can go on like this.”
Speaking to the Times, he said, “I think having lost an election the party must look for a new leader to take us forward.”
Shapps is referring to the loss by May of the Tories’ parliamentary majority in the election, which forced her to rely on the support of 10 Democratic Unionist Party MPs to remain in office as a minority government. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn benefitted from a surge of anti-Tory and anti-austerity sentiment.
At this stage, the number of MPs being cited by Shapps as supporting a leadership election are not sufficient to call one. Under Conservatives rules, 15 percent of MPs (at least 47) are needed to trigger a formal contest, which they would do by writing a vote of no confidence letter to the chair of the party’s back bench 1922 Committee.
Among those is former minister Ed Vaizey, who said, “I think there will be quite a few people who will now be pretty firmly of the view that…