THE Chancellor has conspicuously and repeatedly failed to give his support to Theresa May leading the Conservatives into the next General Election.
On a visit to Scotland, Philip Hammond said the next election, scheduled for 2022, was a matter of “future” Tory leadership, rather than saying Mrs May would still be in post.
Labour said it exposed "real divisions at the heart of the Tory party".
Mrs May recently signalled that, despite losing her Commons majority in June, she intended to carry on as Prime Minister for the long-term, saying she was “not a quitter”.
However Mr Hammond said Mrs May was merely the best person to lead the “the job in hand”, meaning the Brexit negotiations, but did not go beyond that.
He also failed to deny weekend media reports that he offered Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson his support as Prime Minister in a 4am text as the election result came in
The comments are likely to inflame the already febrile mood inside the UK cabinet, in which Mr Hammond, Mr Johnson, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Brexit Secretary David Davis are all reported to be vying for Mrs May’s job.
The continued speculation over her shelf-life is set to dominate next week’s UK Conservative conference in Manchester.
Speaking to the media at Dundee’s Discovery Point, Mr Hammond was asked to identify the best person to lead the Tories into the next election.
Rather than name Mrs May, he said: “I’m not going to get involved in a discussion about future Conservative party leadership politics. Theresa May has made it very clear that she has a job to do. I am completely behind her in doing that job.
“I think she’s making an excellent job of managing the Brexit negotiations. We’re entering a critical phase now and all of us need to focus our attention on delivering a Brexit that works for Britain.”
Pressed on Mrs May’s suitability for 2022, he went on: “I’m not going to get into a discussion about future potential leadership discussions in the Conservative party.
“I think you’ll see next week at our party conference that the party is clear and unified behind Theresa May delivering us a Brexit that works for Britain, and that’s going to be our primary focus over the next couple of weeks.”
Asked directly if Mrs May was his choice to lead the Conservatives into the General Election, he replied: “I’m not going to talk about future Conservative leadership.
“I want to talk about the job in hand, and Theresa May is clearly the best person to lead the Conservative party, to lead the Government, through this very complex process of Brexit, and that is what she is focused on.
“She has been very clear. That is what she is focused on. That is the job in hand, that is the job she considers that she was elected to do, and she is going to get on with it.”
Mr Hammond also did not texting Mr Johnson that he would support him being Mrs May’s replacement - a scenario that did come to pass after Mrs May announced she intended to form a minority government, despite throwing away her Commons majority.
Asked if he had sent the text, Mr Hammond said: “There was an awful lot of communication going on during the early hours of that morning - texting, telephone calling, between all sorts of colleagues. I don’t recognise some of the material that I’ve seen in the Sunday papers.
“What I do know is that the most important conversation I had on that night was with Theresa May when she told me she had decided to seek to form a government. She asked me to serve in it, and I committed to do so and to back her.”
Asked again if he could not remember whether he texted the Foreign Secretary about replacing Mrs May, one of Mr Hammond’s aides shut down the line of questioning.
Shadow Scottish Secretary Lesley Laird said: "This is an extraordinary move from the Chancellor and exposes the real divisions at the heart of the Tory party.
"Theresa May has lost the dressing room so badly she can't even get the dreaded vote of confidence.
"It's time for Theresa May to step aside and for the Tories to call a general election. The country needs to decide who is going to lead - the UK cannot trust a government that cannot trust itself."
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