Theresa May to meet Tory committee chair amid calls to name departure date
Theresa May is due to meet the chair of the Tories influential backbench committee today as she comes under renewed pressure to name her departure date.
The Prime Minister will meet Sir Graham Brady to discuss her future after a number of local Tory associations confirmed they will hold a vote of no confidence in her on 15 June, according to the BBC.
Brady has previously said that the 1922 committee wanted "clarity" on May's departure, after she pledged to resign if parliament passes her unpopular Brexit deal.
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The quest to remove her as Prime Minister has grown in the wake of disastrous local election results, in which the Tories lost 1,334 councillors – their worst result since 1995.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said May must announce her departure date "very soon".
"As a result of the devastating election result, the PM has in effect become a caretaker.
"As such, she is not empowered to make any deal with the Labour Party which itself suffered a very similar result. Two discredited administrations making a discredited deal is not the answer to the electorate," he said.
Meanwhile, talks between the Tories and Labour will begin again today in a bid to break the Brexit deadlock. Much of the discussions have been centred on whether the two parties could agree to a customs union post-Brexit.
However, foreign secretary and leadership contender Jeremy Hunt has poured cold water on the idea, saying he is "not a believer" in a customs union post-Brexit because it does not offer the UK a "long-term solution".
Read more: Cross-party Brexit talks to continue despite anger over customs union plan
“I’m not a believer in a customs union as a sustainable long-term solution,” Hunt told the BBC, adding that the UK economy was too big for such an arrangement.
“I want to look whatever deal is come to between the parties and I know this is a crucial week. I think this is a time when we have to be willing to make compromises on all sides because the message of last week was that voters for both main parties are very, very angry about the fact Brexit hasn’t been delivered,” Hunt said.