Brexit: toppling me won't help negotiations, May tells rebel Tory MPs

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Brexit: toppling me won't help negotiations, May tells rebel Tory MPs
PM says she thinks there are too few MPs pushing for a change of leader to trigger contest
Theresa May has said that as far as she knows there are not yet enough Conservative MPs moving against her to spark a leadership contest, and that replacing her would not help deliver Brexit.
The prime minister is facing open calls for her resignation from Brexiter MPs after she released a much-criticised draft agreement for leaving the EU.
After a week of turmoil, in which her government lost two cabinet ministers and several junior ministers, members of the pro-leave European Research Group have claimed Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, will by this week have received enough letters to launch a Tory party leadership contest.
Speaking on Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News, May said she had spoken to Brady at the end of last week and to her knowledge the 48-letter threshold to spark a no-confidence vote in her leadership had not yet been reached.
She said her internal critics thinking of replacing her as Conservative leader should think again: “It is not going to make the [Brexit] negotiations any easier and it won’t change the parliamentary arithmetic.”
Asked by Ridge whether she had considered stepping down, May said: “No, I haven’t.
“Of course it has been a tough week. Actually these negotiations have been tough right from the start, but they were always going to get even more difficult right toward the end when we are coming to that conclusion,” she said.
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May said the next seven days would be critical, and that she would be travelling back to Brussels to talk to figures including Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president.
“I will be going back to Brussels. I will be in touch with other leaders as well, because the summit next week – and it is next week – this special European council, will be among the European leaders,” she said.
May said Dominic Raab, her former Brexit secretary who resigned and claimed the UK could not step away from the Irish “backstop” without the EU’s permission, was wrong.
“We can have debates in Westminster about whether this is the perfect Brexit from this viewpoint or from another viewpoint. What is important is that we deliver it,” she said.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that the former Tory London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith and the veteran Brexiter Sir Bill Cash had written to Brady, bringing the running total of MPs declared to have expressed no confidence in the prime minister to 25.