Fighting Tory MPs are snubbing PM's call for unity
The prime minister calls for her party to come together but the internal warfare continues with little prospect of letting up.
Friday 14 December 2018 06:24, UK
When Theresa May stood in Downing Street after surviving her no-confidence ballot, she spoke of bringing the country back together "rather than entrenching division".
And then - optimistically and perhaps naively - she said: "That must start here in Westminster, with politicians on all sides coming together and acting in the national interest."
Some hope, prime minister!
In the 24 hours after the result was declared by 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady, the blue-on-blue warfare between Leave and Remain Tory MPs was even more vicious than before the vote.
Indeed, the blood-letting has been so venomous that some party grandees now fear the party is about to split. Suddenly, it's the Tories and not Jeremy Corbyn's Labour who are locked in a public left-right civil war.
The post-ballot rancour began with the chancellor Philip Hammond declaring: "What this vote will do is flush out the extremists who are trying to advance a particular agenda which would really not be in the interests of the British people or the British economy."
Other insults hurled at the Brexiteers by pro-Remain ministers and MPs since the 200-117 vote for the prime minister have included "headbangers" and "student union kids".
Extremists? The Tory Right didn't like that. They already loathe Mr Hammond, of course, and call him the "Remoaner-in-chief".
Iain Duncan Smith, whose Commons office on parliament's Upper Committee Corridor was HQ for the whipping operation of the mutineers - angrily told the chancellor: "Moderate your language!"
He said: "I have one simple message for the chancellor: When you start turning on your own party and making accusations about them, that's the beginning of the end for your party."
Methinks that Mr Duncan Smith doth protest too much.
A few hours before Conservative MPs voted, I was tipped off that IDS's office was the rebels' HQ and so - naturally - I went to investigate.
Outside the door was Charlie Elphicke, who minutes earlier had controversially had the Conservative whip restored. He was tweeting about being re-admitted to the fold.
Inside the room I could hear the loud, rasping voice of Mark Francois, one of the prime minister's most outspoken critics. Mr Elphicke opened the door and said: "Iain, Jon Craig's here."
Out came IDS, looking rather sheepish. He denied that his office was being used as the rebels' whipping HQ. And when I asked him why Mark Francois was inside, he said: "He's trying to persuade me to vote against the prime minister."
Really? Not long after the vote, Mr Duncan Smith admitted he did vote against her. "I didn't want to do this but she has not listened," he said.
Another big-name Brexiteer who hit out at the prime minister on the morning after the vote was Dominic Raab, who was Brexit secretary for a few short months, from July until November,
"Did you back her in the vote last night?" he was asked as he left his home.
"No, I'm afraid I didn't," he replied, "because after pulling the meaningful vote and with the scale we now see of opposition to the deal, I don't think her position had been tenable.
"We have to make the best of it, but I think my biggest fear now is that if she continues in place then we're in risk of a Jeremy Corbyn government."
The leaders of the European Research Group, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker, reacted to the vote by demanding the prime minister's resignation and urged cabinet ministers to stage a mutiny.
Mr Rees-Mogg told reporters: "You may remember that Margaret Thatcher said 'We fight on, we fight to win'. Nobody was tougher than Mrs Thatcher and the next day she resigned. So it's not impossible.
"I think Theresa May should consider what she said last night. I agree with her that we do want somebody who can unite the country and the Conservative Party, and she has to ask herself is she realistically that person?"
And Mr Baker told Sky News: "I don't think there's any denying members of the cabinet have their own leadership contests well geared up in case she had been removed yesterday. You have to ask yourself whether those people, in the privacy of the ballot box, voted to give her confidence."
There's no doubt that the PM's pledge to quit before a 2022 general election - inevitably leading to accusations from opponents that she's now a "lame duck prime minister" - has fired the starting gun for a future Tory leadership contest.
When she arrived at the EU summit in Brussels, she was asked to confirm publicly the promise she made behind closed doors to Tory MPs in her plea for her job at the 1922 Committee meeting minutes before MPs began voting.
"Yes, " she said. "I have said that in my heart I would love to be able to lead the Conservative Party into the next general election.
"But I think it is right that the party feels that it would prefer to go into that election with a new leader."
The bookies' favourite to succeed Mrs May is Boris Johnson, who has been accused by Tory MPs of being "on manoeuvres" after losing weight and sporting a new-look, neater haircut.
Writing in The Spectator, he revealed he has lost 12lb in two weeks, claiming he has dropped "bathfuls" of alcohol for glasses of water and "late-night binges of chorizo and cheese for hermit-sized breakfast portions of porridge".
But in perhaps the cruellest blue-on-blue attack since the Tory no-confidence vote, Tory deputy chairman James Cleverly said the former foreign secretary had wasted his money getting a "leadership haircut".
And Mr Cleverly quipped: "That's £7.50 he'll never get back."