Conservative MPs last night demanded Theresa May sack Philip Hammond for dragging his feet over Brexit as part of a reshuffle to reassert her authority.
The Prime Minister yesterday vowed she would not ‘hide from a challenge’ amid speculation she could oust Boris Johnson in a shake-up of her Cabinet after she saw off a botched coup in the wake of her conference speech.
But last night Brexit-supporting MPs urged her instead to remove the Chancellor, who they accused of being overly pessimistic about Britain’s departure from the EU and constraining efforts to relaunch her premiership.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond and his wife Susan Williams-Walker arriving at the Conservative Party Conference last week
In her first interview since her conference speech was blighted by a persistent cough and a prankster who handed her a fake P45, Mrs May yesterday admitted it was an ‘uncomfortable’ time but insisted she never considered abandoning the address because she is ‘not someone who gives up’.
She fuelled rumours she could seek to bolster her position by holding a reshuffle in the coming weeks as she suggested she was prepared to either sack or demote Mr Johnson.
Asked what she might do with the Foreign Secretary, Mrs May told The Sunday Times: ‘It has never been my style to hide from a challenge and I’m not going to start now.
Brexit-supporting MPs urged Mrs May (pictured at church yesterday) to remove the Chancellor
‘I’m the PM, and 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.’
However, last night Mrs May faced growing pressure to use a reshuffle to remove Mr Hammond, who is nicknamed ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ for his dry demeanour, before next month’s Budget.
Critics of the Chancellor have accused him of limiting the ambition of the Government’s domestic policy agenda and attempting to keep Britain closely tied to the EU for years after Brexit.
Ahead of the June election, Mrs May had planned to sack Mr Hammond, and Downing Street aides held long discussions about how she would handle his ousting, but she scrapped the idea after losing her majority.
Yesterday, Nadine Dorries, who is a supporter of Mr Johnson, became the first backbencher to publicly call on the Prime Minister to revive her plan.
She told ITV’s Peston on Sunday: ‘If I were the Prime Minister, the person I would be demoting or certainly sacking would be Philip Hammond.
‘She very much wanted to do that before the election was called because I don’t think he’s been completely on board.
‘I think he’s been deliberately trying to make the Brexit negotiations difficult, stall them, obfuscate the issues, I just don’t think he’s been 100 per cent on board.’
Another Tory MP added last night: ‘The backbenchers are livid with Hammond because he pushed and shoved over the summer to water down Brexit.
‘But also, everybody thinks he is too pessimistic. We want to be upbeat and we just don’t think he’s helping. So there is a lot of anger.’
In her first interview since her conference speech was blighted by a persistent cough (pictured taking a lozenge from Mr Hammond)
Ruth Davidson refuses to rule out Tory leadership bid (in 2021)
Ruth Davidson said yesterday that a Scot ‘absolutely’ could become Tory leader as she left the door open to a bid to become prime minister after 2021.
The Scottish Conservative leader ruled out moving to Westminster ‘right now’, insisting she had a job to do in Scotland ‘at the moment’.
Miss Davidson said she planned to fight Nicola Sturgeon to become first minister in the Holyrood elections in four years’ time, but she refused to rule out a move south of the border afterwards.
Asked if a Scot could ever again lead the Tories, Miss Davidson told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘Oh absolutely, without a doubt.’
Ruth Davidson said yesterday that a Scot ‘absolutely’ could become Tory leader as she left the door open to a bid to become prime minister after 2021
But she added: ‘I’ve got a job at the moment. I am not looking past 2021. I’m trying to build a party that was third, in some cases fourth when I became leader, to be a credible government of Scotland.
‘I’ve come a long way in that, I’ve got a long way still to go. I know what my job is and this is my job right now, but you know I’m looking to 2021 and I’m not looking past it ’cause there’s quite a few things in the in-tray right now. ’
A senior Tory backbencher said both Mr Johnson and Mr Hammond were ‘on probation’, and there would be a ‘tit for tat battle’ with a push for the Chancellor to be removed by Brexiteers if the ‘Remoaners’ succeeded in getting rid of the Foreign Secretary.
Referring to how Mr Hammond handed Mrs May a cough sweet as she struggled to give her conference speech on Wednesday, he added: ‘The Chancellor is not just there to provide Strepsils.
‘The authority sits with the PM and if he is not willing to help deliver her agenda on Brexit or at home, she should remove him.’
But an ally of Mr Hammond last night rejected the criticism. He said: ‘Just last week Nadine was calling on her fellow MPs to “turn their fire on the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn”.
Nadine Dorries became the first backbencher to publicly call on the Prime Minister to revive her plan of sacking Philip Hammond
‘It would be helpful for her to heed her own advice.’
Former prime minister Sir John Major yesterday hit out at the ‘disloyal’ behaviour of some Tories who are ‘driven by their own personal agenda’ – comments viewed as a slapdown to Mr Johnson, who overshadowed both her Brexit speech in Florence last month and the start of the party’s conference.
Sir John urged the Tories to unite or risk the ‘neo-Marxist’ Jeremy Corbyn taking power.
However, Mr Johnson used a Sunday Telegraph column to pledge loyalty to Mrs May, and said the party’s MPs ‘have sniffed the air and turned sensibly away from the cliff’. Addressing plotters hoping the PM will step down, he wrote: ‘What do you think you are doing, you nutters?’
Former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine said it would be a high-stakes gamble for Mrs May to sack the Foreign Secretary, who it is thought would leave Cabinet if asked to move to another role.
‘I think that if she wants to assert her authority she would have to sack him, but of course it’s a high-risk policy because he will be on the back benches and he won’t go quietly,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend. When asked where Mrs May should put Mr Johnson, he told Sky News: ‘Mongolia, somewhere like that.’
Culture Secretary Karen Bradley last night played down the need for a change in personnel around the Cabinet table. She told BBC Radio 5 Live: ‘We had a reshuffle after the referendum result when we saw a change of leader, that’s less than 18 months ago.’
Mrs May yesterday showed she was carrying on with business as usual, posting pictures of herself campaigning in her Maidenhead constituency on Twitter. ‘Out on the doorstep again this weekend,’ she wrote. ‘A really good chance to show how we truly are building a country that works for everyone.’