David Davis fails to back Theresa May's bid to stay PM until 2022
2 min read
David Davis has failed to back Theresa May's bid to stay Prime Minister until the next election.
The Brexit Secretary would only say that Mrs May "does a good job" when quizzed about her remarks.
Mrs May stunned Westminster last week by declaring she is "not a quitter" and wanted to lead the Conservatives into the next election, which is due in 2022.
Speaking on a visit to Japan, she said: "There’s been an awful lot of speculation which has no basis in it whatsoever. I’m in this for the long term.”
Asked on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show this morning whether his "heart soared" when he heard the remarks, Mr Davis pointedly refused to endorse Mrs May's ambitions.
He said: "She's a great Prime Minister, I think. I've served her the last 12 months. I have never been anything less than impressed in the way she runs the country - that's what matters to the people. Not the politics, running the country, and she does a good job."
Meanwhile, David Cameron's former top spin doctor also criticised the Prime Minister.
Craig Oliver, who quit as Number 10 director of communications in the wake of the EU referendum, told Radio 5Live's Pienaar's Politics: "I was genuinely surprised to hear it and I was also genuinely surprised that a lot of the commentary that went around it was people saying ‘well, what do you expect? She had to answer the question.’
"She didn’t have the answer the question in that way. She could have said ‘I’m in Japan trying to get to a situation to make sure we have a proper trade deal with them when we leave the EU. All my focus is on Brexit and I’m not going to get drawn into side shows’.
"What’s happened as a result of this is they’ve taken a very big rock and thrown it into the pool at precisely the wrong time. What they needed to do was say ‘we’ve got our heads down, we’re working for the country.’ If they want to stay on in the long term, this is only going to happen organically, this is only going to happen by people saying ‘you know what, she screwed up in the election but actually she’s doing a very good job’. It’s not about asserting yourself in this way because actually that just winds a lot of people up."
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