Executive members of the 1922 Committee are preparing to ask Theresa May to step down immediately if she fails to set out a timetable for leaving Downing Street.
Up to 10 members of the powerful group of senior Tory MPs have discussed telling the prime minister to name a date for the end of her premiership or face immediate demands to go, sources confirmed.
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May is due to appear before the committee on Thursday as the party struggles to contain widespread anger among its MPs and members at May’s failure to lead the UK through Brexit.
She indicated earlier this year that she would resign once her Brexit deal with Brussels has been passed by MPs – a promise that seemed to persuade a number of pro-Brexit Tories to back the deal, among them Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. However, parliament has been in deadlock over Brexit for months and has rejected the deal three times.
Several key committee members, including the chair, Sir Graham Brady, and the treasurer, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, have said May should draw up a clear schedule for her departure.
The Guardian understands that other executive members, including the South East Cornwall MP Sheryll Murray, have discussed plans to tell her to stand down immediately if she has not arrived at the meeting with a short unambiguous timetable for departure. “If she has to be told to her face, so be it. Enough is enough,” said one source.
The 1922 executive meeting is also expected to return for a third time to the issue of whether Tory leadership rules should be changed to allow a fresh challenge to the prime minister.
May’s decision to work with Labour on a compromise to deliver Brexit seems to have caused many Tories to lose their patience. A No 10 source has suggested that a temporary customs deal with a clear exit clause could be a possibility.
Thirteen former Cabinet ministers and Brady have written to May warning that “any customs union” with Labour would forfeit the “loyal middle of the Conservative party”.
May had been keen to table the withdrawal agreement bill before the European elections on 23 May, but the mood of Conservative MPs has been hardening against it, even without any customs union concession.
Tensions within both the Conservatives and Labour have grown and cost both parties dearly at local elections this month, and could lead to similar losses in the European elections.
Clifton-Brown told the Evening Standard that May should step down voluntarily by early June or risk a vote of no confidence under new rules. “I would like her to go, preferably before the European elections … but if not, fairly soon afterwards,” the veteran MP said.