The prime minister’s position now appears weaker than at any time since the 2017 general election.
The Sun uses a front-page editorial to say she has “lost the backing of much of the country and now her party” and “must announce today that she will stand down as soon as her Brexit deal is approved and Britain is out of the EU”.
But would a change of leadership make a difference to the Brexit negotiations? The Week looks at the runners and riders and their potential Brexit futures.
David Lidington
When news of a potential coup emerged over the weekend, and May’s de-facto deputy David Lidington was heralded as a potential caretaker PM, Brexiteers “weren’t thrilled at the idea of being led by the arch-Remainer former Europe minister”, says The Times’s Matt Chorley.
One MP from the party’s Remain wing told The Mail on Sunday: “Lidington’s reputation is so pro-EU the Brexit hardcore in the ERG will eat him alive.”
It also transpired that Lidington himself isn’t so thrilled with the idea either. “If there’s one thing working closely with the prime minister does is cure you completely of any lingering shred of ambition to want to do that task,” he told ITV News.
The deputy PM has been at the forefront of discussions with opposition parties in the Commons. This has led to accusations that a Lidington-led government would attempt to negotiate a softer Brexit, which would potentially include remaining in the European single market.
In an interview with The Observer during the referendum campaign in 2016, Lidington criticised Conservative colleagues who wanted to leave the bloc. “I do find it extraordinary that those who want Britain to leave the EU seem to hold to two utterly contradictory propositions at the same time,” he said.
Michael Gove
The Mail on Sunday also suggested that Michael Gove, the environment secretary, was being lined up for the caretaker role. Gove was slightly more coy than Lidington on the chances of being parachuted in, but insisted: “It’s not the time to change the captain of the ship, I think what we need to do is to chart the right course.”
In this scenario, Gove would take the helm in the short term “on the grounds that he is a Brexiteer who is supportive of the Withdrawal Agreement”, says The Spectator’s Katy Balls. He would then work to convince Brexiteers to back the agreement and a Tory leadership contest would follow once the UK had officially left the EU. “One of the cons with this option is that MPs are sceptical that Gove would move aside,” says Balls.
Having worked his way back into the senior echelons of government, the environment secretary is seen as “someone who could hold the Conservative Party together, and might be a candidate Remainers could stomach because he’s hinted he could be open to a softer form of Brexit”, says the BBC. But it’s for exactly this reason that the Tory’s hardline Brexiteers believe him an unacceptable choice.
Boris Johnson
A perennial thorn in May’s side, Johnson’s importance to the success of May’s Brexit deal has been underlined by the fact that he’s met up with the prime minister three times over the past week.
Friends of Johnson have told the Financial Times that he’s making his decisions based on what’s right for Brexit and will not vote for the deal “unless there are changes to the so-called Irish backstop”. In his weekly column for The Daily Telegraph, he said today that the Government had “blinked”, “baulked” and “bottled” Brexit as May was “chicken”.
A Boris-led Brexit has meant many things since the EU referendum. He now says that May should extend the implementation period to the end of 2021 if necessary, use it to negotiate a free-trade deal and “pay the fee”. He says that she must come out of the EU now – “without the backstop”.
But this is “almost certainly a non-starter, because the EU has ruled it out repeatedly”, says The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow.
Dominic Raab
The experienced international lawyer, who was picked by May as Brexit secretary for his reputed know-how of world trade negotiations, didn’t last long in the job. He resigned after complaining he’d been sidelined in the negotiations in favour of civil servant Olly Robbins. As Brexit secretary, tasked with solving issues around the Irish border, Raab controversially admitted he hadn’t read the Belfast Agreement, also known as the Good Friday agreement, which led to peace on the island of Ireland.
Raab is a steadfast opponent of May’s deal and is strongly supported by Tory MPs set against compromise. It’s therefore likely that as PM he would rip up the withdrawal agreement and push for a no-deal exit from the EU.
“The contest will be a Leaver v Remain primary with Boris and Dom fighting to be the party’s Brexit candidate,” one Conservative Eurosceptic told the FT. “Dom is a man of principle and he isn’t going to flip-flop.”
Jeremy Corbyn
The prospect of parliament seizing control of the Brexit process this week has made a general election look more likely. One minister told ITV: “Let’s be clear, there will be some of my colleagues who will argue Parliament should be dissolved and we should take our chances in a general election rather than have a referendum or customs-union Brexit [a soft Brexit].”
Should Labour manage to take power, it looks likely a second referendum would be held. The party’s shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer, told the BBC over the weekend that Labour could fight a snap general election pledging to hold a public vote on any Brexit deal.
But sources close to those involved in promoting a Norway-style Brexit plan have suggested the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been “privately enthusiastic about the idea in meetings with the group’s leaders, who also include the Tories Nick Boles, Sir Oliver Letwin and Robert Halfon”, reports The Guardian.
