Little-known rule is another route to removing Theresa May via no-confidence vote
Since she survived a no-confidence vote by MPs last December, Theresa May has been stumbling along no less disastrously but at least felt secure from any further risk of being forced from her position by her party until the end of this year. Tory party rules do not permit MPs to mount another challenge until twelve months have elapsed.
However, it appears that her many critics have identified a little-known – and never before used – loophole that could allow them to topple her even before the end of this month.
The chairs of local Conservative associations – the equivalent of Labour’s ‘constituency Labour party’ local member organisations – are circulating a petition calling for an Extraordinary General Meeting to pass a no-confidence vote of no confidence in May. Only sixty-five association chairs need to sign the petition to force its staging and according to the Daily Telegraph as many as fifty have already signed.
If it goes ahead, this would be the first time in history that this provision in the Tories’ rules has been used.
Theresa May managed to survive the December vote thanks to the naked self-interest of many of her MPs, who voted to keep her in place in hope of promotion – or, just as likely, out of fear of a general election that any new leader might have felt obliged to call.
However, the Tory membership and therefore many association chairs are far more inclined to a ‘hard’ Brexit and don’t have MP salaries to lose – so in reality this move poses a far greater threat to May than she survived in December.
The move might have the effect of moving Theresa May to focus properly on the concessions she would have to make to Jeremy Corbyn to achieve an agreement on a better Brexit deal than she has repeatedly tried to inflict on the country. But Labour would be aware that any agreement remains meaningless unless she can find a legal way to prevent her successor from simply reneging on it through a so-called ‘parliamentary lock’.
If a no-confidence motion is passed by the emergency meeting of the
Tories’ ‘National Convention’, it is not a binding vote – but such a vote by what is left of the Conservatives’ national membership would put extreme pressure on May to step down.
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If it ain’t binding, then it will be ignored. I can just picture her saying “I understand your frustration, but hang in there while i deliver the brexit I promised”.
‘O’ Level BS, but heck, they’ll suck it up.
Absolutely correct heenan73 – Theresa May will never resign. The Tory party rules have lumbered us with a pig headed incompetent PM who cannot be got rid of until the end of the year at the earliest . I don’t think she will go even then. TheTory MPs will be too scared to oust her and she will never go voluntarily.
And so she will limp on uttering her platitudes, paying tribute but not decent wages to public sector workers, never answering a question etc etc while the country goes to hell in a handcart. She is without doubt the the worse PM ever.
Unfortunately she is that pig ignorant and thick skinned, anything non-binding is just going to have her spew yet more inane drivel, lies and platitudes, whilst continuing on her merry way dragging the whole country along into her living hell. Inflicting as much chaos and collateral damage as widely as possible.
IF they pass a no confidence vote she could/should call a general election and screw the whole lot of them !
Don’t worry, people. She’s on a walking holiday so we all know what comes next. The only question is when. When will she decide the thing to do is call a General Election?
I reckon around Sunday lunchtime…
Spot on! If I were a Tory I would be quaking in my boots at the thought of whatever plan of amazing, breathtaking and spectacular incompetence that could be formulating in her mind – so daft that it could be seen from space. She’s good at that !!
She is being taken away for a conditioning / reinforcing session with her husband. He and his city cronies are actually in charge, shes just the sock puppet for the 0.1%. She is a husk, and empty shell, which is why we all pick up on her shortcomings; once the role her husband plays in all this is understood, perhaps the people will see the role of the authoritarian elite in forcing change that is not in the interest of the UK and the people, but for mobile international wealth. The cost will be our human rights. The danger posed by Assange in all this is to publish the truth about what the corrupt ruling class are actually up to.
After Easter, so Tuesdy / Wed next week .
“The move might have the effect of moving Theresa May to focus properly on the concessions she would have to make to Jeremy Corbyn to achieve an agreement on a better Brexit deal than she has repeatedly tried to inflict on the country.”
Uh??? If Conservative associations are behind any move, the intention will be to do a box-of-frogs deal, not a sensible one!
It’s pissing in the wind. The Tories, if little else, know on which side their bread’s buttered, and they will have little wish to destabilize their Party further at this juncture.
The only reason it might happen is to get a short-lived boost from a new leader. Which isn’t totally beyond credence, given that a fair proportion of the Great British Public are dimwitted enough to actually trust Johnson. But I do credit a fair number of Tory MPs with animal cunning enough to prevent it.
‘The Janus face at capital’s call.
As the poorest lie they battered.
Socialists free working humanity.
As if the rich they ever mattered?
(They just think they do).’
Just heard a minor aristocrat Bloody Lord of the Manor owner of Sam Smith’s breweries in Tadcaster, Yorkshire has just banned customers from using their mobiles whilst in his pubs – treating working people like plebs (and dirt).
Scrap this Ban by the right Wing Tory Barbarian and kick the Tory Barbarian Govt out!
Take Sam Smith’s into public ownership – now there’s a thought – community pubs?
Leave May ‘in charge’ of the Tories as long as possible so she can inflict even more damage upon them. Failing that, a GE.