Top Tories refuse to back Theresa May’s claim that she will fight the next election as party boss
Officials in No10 would not repeat the PM's insistence that she will be in charge for five years
THERESA MAY was left isolated again last night after not a single senior Tory backed her bid to fight the next General Election as Tory boss.
A surprise bid by the PM to win herself up to a decade more in No10 backfired as friends stayed silent and Conservative critics lined up to pour derision on her.
In the start of a humiliating climb down for her last night, allies suggested Mrs May had misspoken.
And senior No10 officials repeatedly refused to repeat her ambition to fight the 2022 poll at the party’s helm.
The PM stunned MPs yesterday by declaring her ambition to stay in charge for many more years, while all had presumed she planned to stand down in 2019 after delivering Brexit.
Publicly, supportive MPs - including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson - would only say they backed the PM to stay on for now.
But privately, ministers and backbenchers alike still angry at Mrs May for throwing away the Tories’ majority in June were scathing.
One prominent Tory MP dubbed her as “living in la-la land”, while another called their leader “deluded”.
The powerful chairman of Tory MPs’ 1922 committee claimed Mrs May had only meant to rule out wild speculation that she had picked a precise date to stand down in two years time.
While insisting nobody in the party wanted a fresh leadership contest now, Graham Brady added: “I think the comment that Theresa made was far more a rebuttal of an unfounded story last week which suggested she had fixed the date in 2019 to resign”.
The PM herself also failed to repeat her bold claim when challenged about it during a press conference in Tokyo yesterday.
Instead, Mrs May would only say: “I said I wasn’t a quitter.
“There is a long-term job to done, there is an important job to be done in the United Kingdom, we stand at a really critical time in the UK.”
A former Cabinet minister told The Sun yesterday that Mrs May is only still in charge now because “there is no credible alternative candidate”, adding: “As soon as one emerges, it’s curtains for her”.
Mrs May’s enemies leaped on her gaffe to plunge the knife in deep.
Ex-Chancellor George Osborne, who she sacked, used his Evening Standard newspaper to compare her rule now to “the living dead in a second-rate horror film”.
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Party grandee Lord Heseltine said it was “not realistic” for Mrs May to lead the Tories into the next general election, while he predicted Brexit troubles would see it held in two years time.
Lib Dem leader Vince Cable added: “Within hours of Theresa May saying she will fight the next general election, Conservatives have been lining up to say that she won’t. Far from strengthening her leadership position, she has weakened it”.