The home secretary, Amber Rudd, has told her Conservative colleagues to get on with their jobs as the infighting within the party intensified.
Tuesday brought more reports of briefing and counter-briefing by cabinet colleagues and news of a letter of no confidence in the prime minister having been drawn up.
For her part, Theresa May has tried to reassert authority over ministers by ordering them to stop leaking details of their rifts over Brexit. She was also reported to have told a drinks reception for Conservative MPs: “No backbiting, no carping”, adding that their choice was “me or Jeremy Corbyn … and nobody wants that”.
Speaking on Tuesday morning, Rudd said: “I wholly support the prime minister in her views that we must all – as ministers and, indeed, backbenchers – get on with the job in hand. There is an important job of government to be done and … [ministers] are honoured to have their roles and I know they should be getting on, as some of them do, and delivering on what they have been asked to do.”
May is braced for a leadership challenge. But, asked if the prime minister should sack those found to be briefing against her and each other, Rudd insisted the cabinet was working well together.
But she told Sky News that “what happens outside cabinet, with occasional briefings, as we saw over the weekend, is something else”.
On Monday, David Cameron urged the Tories not to “slip backwards” and to offer a more inspiring vision for the country. The former prime minister told the London Evening Standard, which is now edited by his former righthand man George Osborne: “The Conservative party only succeeds if it is a party of the future … I want us to go on being the open, liberal, tolerant party that we became post-2005, because I think that was part of our success.”
Despite the efforts to end the feuding, some MPs have suggested the manoeuvres against May will continue after parliament’s summer break.
The tensions have increased in the week since details were leaked of a cabinet meeting in which the chancellor, Philip Hammond, was said to have called public sector workers overpaid and claimed that driving modern trains was so easy that “even a woman can do it”.
A later report in the Daily Telegraph quoted an anonymous cabinet minister as saying Hammond was trying to “frustrate Brexit” and viewed leave-supporting colleagues as “pirates”.
Allies of Hammond hit back, claiming Michael Gove was behind the leaks, according to the Sun. That was denied by sources close to the environment secretary but a further briefing from within the party pointed the finger at both him and the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson. The two men were “so obsessed with a hard Brexit that they’re prepared to run the economy off a cliff”, a source was quoted as saying.
As the internal battle raged, a pro-Brexit MP claimed he was asked to sign a letter of no confidence in May but had refused to so far because of doubts over who would take over – including concerns that a pro-EU leader could be installed.
“If there was someone credible to take over I’d probably back them. But I’m not convinced that where we are now is tenable. There is not a winning situation at the moment,” the MP said, adding that the Brexit minister, David Davis, would be the preferred choice at the moment.
