Theresa May pleads with Sun Readers to let her stay on in Downing Street for ‘the next few years’ so she can deliver Brexit
Prime Minister's plea comes as she addresses her future for the first time since election disaster
THERESA May has asked Britain to let her stay on in Downing Street for “the next few years” so she can deliver Brexit.
Addressing her future for the first time since the general election disaster, the PM said she will remain her party’s leader only for “as long as they want me”.
She also repeatedly refused to commit to fighting the next general election as Tory boss, when interviewed by The Sun to mark her first year in power today.
But Mrs May did appeal for more time to finish the huge job of delivering a successful EU exit, set for March 29, 2019.
She said: “What I want to do is just recognise that there is a job to be done here, over the next few years. “I want to get on with doing that job.”
The PM’s remarks will be seen as her strongest public signal yet that is preparing to stand down from power before June 2022.
On the eve of her anniversary of moving it to No10 – on July 13 last year - Mrs May also delivered a searingly honest first assessment of what went wrong during her disastrous election campaign.
The PM admitted;
- she failed to put across her personal mission to help Britain’s ‘Just Managing’ class, which she insisted is the real “me”,
- under her, the Tories didn’t talk up their economic success enough or successfully dismantle Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto giveaways,
- she didn’t deliver a positive enough message of hope for young people.
Having suffered the deep humiliation, she also revealed she was never tempted to walk away from No10, despite enduring “some pretty depressing moments”.
And despite the mistakes, the PM still insisted she doesn’t regret calling the snap election that ended with the disastrous loss of her majority.
Mrs May said: “I can see why some might say that, as it did not go quite according to plan.
“There were good reasons why I called it, and I continue to think that it was the right thing to do”.
Tackling head on the campaign trail criticism that she was a too heavily scripted ‘Maybot, the PM named not talking from the heart about her passion to help struggling workers as her biggest election frustration.
Speaking to The Sun from her No10 study yesterday, Mrs May said: “I set out a year ago, when I stood on the steps here, the sort of vision I had. The sort of country I wanted us to be.
“I don’t think that vision came through sufficiently during the campaign.
“’Me’ was that speech on the steps of No10 a year ago.
“That is what we were working on right up to the election, and it is what we are now working on.
“But that did not come across during the election campaign.”
Detailing the chaotic campaign’s other major failings in her eyes, Mrs May added: “And I don’t think we talked enough about what we had achieved in terms of the economy and jobs.
“We did not do enough not just on the positives of the economic record we had, but also the negatives of what Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto would mean for people.”
MOST READ IN POLITICS
The PM added: “Obviously for us, we have to think about the message we have for those young people”.
She named solving Britain’s housing crisis as “a key area for us”, with millions of under 40s locked out of the housing ladder, promising to “keep up momentum” on it.
But she added: “I take responsibility. I called the election campaign and I led the campaign and I take responsibility for it”.
Asked if she was ever tempted to walk away during the dark hours and days in the election’s immediate aftermath, Mrs May insisted she always believed it was her duty to keep calm and carry on.
She insisted: “No”.
Recalling the horror of election night itself, the PM said: “There were some pretty depressing moments when I was watching really good colleagues lose their seats on that Friday morning.
“But my view was that it was the largest party, it was our duty to form a government.
“You can walk away at these moments, but I think actually it is important to stand up to your responsibilities and accept that.”
Mrs May repeatedly side-stepped the question on whether she wanted to lead the Tories into the next general election – currently set in law for June 2022 - to instead say: “I have got a job to do.
“My view is I have always said that I would be here for the full term, but what I have also said is that over the years I have given my life to this Conservative Party and I will serve as long as they want me to serve.”
Asked by The Sun if she would personally like to fight another election as leader, Mrs May made it clear she is only now concentrating on the next two or three years ahead to see through Brexit.
The PM said: “Every politician wants to win a full majority for themselves.
“But what I want to do, what I am focussing on now, is over the next few years making sure that we do the Brexit negotiations we make a success of it but also that we open up those other opportunities.”
Some Tory grandees are pushing Mrs May to set a date for her departure in two years time during the party’s annual conference in October, in a bid to buy her more authority and end leadership Cabinet wrangling for position underneath her.
But Mrs May also refused to spell out any timetable, again just saying: “What I want to do is just recognise that there is a job to be done here, over the next few years.
“I want to get on with doing that job.”
The PM also insisted it is wrong to write off the whole election campaign as a disaster as there also some big positives, including in the final result.
She said: “We should not be ashamed of saying that there were good things in that campaign.
“We got 42.4% of the vote. Conservative Party leaders of the past two or three decades would have leapt at 42.4%.
“Tony Blair would have done. We got nearly two million votes more than Tony Blair did in 1997.”
Mrs May also defended her much criticised election manifesto – which Tories have slammed as a depressing vote loser - saying she and key aides had tried to do something different with it.
She explained: “We approached the manifesto in a different way.
“It was not just a list of policies, it was setting out five great challenges that we have got to embrace and deal with as a country, and here are our ideas of how we could do that.
“Obviously some of those ideas went down better than others, and we have to reflect on that. But we will still need to find answers to those issues for the future.
“It was about being realistic about the future.”
She also revealed she has asked Tory party bosses to begin a major review over what went wrong, saying:
“As a party, we are going to look very carefully at how the campaign went and what lessons we need to learn from that”.
There will be no celebrations in No10 to mark the anniversary of a full year in power today, the PM also said.
Instead, she will spend a large part of it holding talks over a working lunch with the King of Spain.