WATCH Tory ex-Chair Grant Shapps: ‘Of course’ Theresa May cannot lead party into next election
2 min read
Former Conservative party chairman Grant Shapps has said Theresa May cannot lead the Tories into the next election.
The former minister said “every serious person” knows Mrs May will not fight another vote as party leader despite her insistence that she is “not a quitter”.
Speculation is rife at Westminster that Mrs May will be forced to stand down by colleagues before the next election, which is due in 2022.
But in an interview last week, the Prime Minister said she had no intention of leaving her job before then.
Mr Shapps told ITV’s Peston on Sunday: “If you run any organisation, a business or a charity and something goes monumentally wrong, as did the election ... the buck does have to stop with that individual.”
“Every serious MP, every serious commentator knows of course she can’t lead us into the next election, of course she can’t.”
Elsewhere Mr Shapps said the Prime Minister should follow Boris Johnson's lead and set out a vision for Brexit.
His claim comes a week after the Foreign Secretary was criticised for undermining Mrs May by setting out his own series of redlines over how Britain leaves the EU.
“One of the reasons why when Boris writes those articles ... they get a lot of attention is that he describes a way that Britain can make it’s way in the world post Brexit so we need a bigger, longer term vision," he added.
I’m not saying Boris should deliver it but I think she should deliver it if she can muster the language to explain that to the nation this week.”
Mr Shapps' intervention comes a month after he gave Mrs May 18 months to save her job. The former party chair then said she is “on trial” and should deliver Brexit before the party judges her performance.
He previously described the Tory party election manifesto as “the world’s worst” and said it read like a “long list of punishments”.
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