ANALYSIS: Theresa May angers Tory MPs with latest 'not a quitter' claim
2 min read
When you're standing next to a hornets' nest, it's a good idea not to hit it with a stick.
But from speaking to Tory MPs this morning, it would appear Theresa May carried out the political equivalent of this masochistic act en route to China overnight.
Surrounded by a salivating press pack on her RAF jet, the PM was asked if her time in Number 10 was coming to an end in the wake of the latest round of Tory in-fighting over Brexit and her leadership.
Wheeling out the soundbite she was first handed by her advisers last August - they don't call her The Maybot for nothing, you know - she replied: "I’ve said to you before, I‘m not a quitter and there is a long-term job to be done.”
"That job is about getting the best Brexit deal, about ensuring that we take back control of our money, our laws, our borders, that we can sign trade deals around the rest of the world. But it is also about our domestic agenda."
Attentive readers will recall that May's first attempt to see off her detractors by suggesting she was prepared to go on and on did not go down terribly well with her MPs.
Well, to coin a phrase, nothing has changed.
"Why does she make stupid, delusional comments like this," asked one of her colleagues I spoke to this morning. "It just makes more letters pile up and hastens the end."
Those letters, in case you didn't know, are the ones stating the signatory has no confidence in the PM's leadership.
If 48 of them are handed to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, then a no confidence vote must be triggered. Many Conservatives believe that moment is fast approaching.
Asked how Tory MPs would react to May's latest defiant statement, another senior figure said: "Badly. Very badly."
A senior minister, however, took a different view - but it it was still one which gave the Prime Minister little cause for comfort.
"It will make no difference to anything," they said. "We're way past that."
It is often said that the moment of maximum danger for a leader is when they are out of the country, allowing their opponents to conspire and plot in their absence.
Theresa May is not due back from China until Friday night.
