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Conservative leadership rift opens as

Brexit recriminations begin
Peter Walker

Boris Johnson and Theresa May, the main contenders to succeed

David Cameron as prime minister, are set to launch their formal
leadership bids this week amid a slightly chaotic and febrile
atmosphere inside the Tory party, with renewed splits developing
between leave and remain supporters.
Johnson stayed silent on how he might plot a path forward for a
post-Brexit UK, surfacing only to play in a charity cricket match
before hunkering down with backbench Tory MP allies at his
Oxfordshire country home, ahead of an imminent launch of his
succession attempt.
Conservative MPs told the Guardian that Theresa May had been
canvassing support among colleagues and was likely to announce
her leadership bid later this week in a speech. The home secretary
has been a potential contender for a long time and is keen to be
viewed as not merely a stop-Boris candidate.

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While Labour is engulfed in the attempt by much of the shadow
cabinet to oust Jeremy Corbyn, the Conservative differences are far
lower key but threaten to become equally bitter. The Johnson and
May camps immediately ran into potential opposition as various
Conservatives did the rounds of the Sunday political talk shows.
For Johnson, a likely problem will be bitterness from some remain
supporters. Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, was among the
first to signal his dissatisfaction by warning Johnson that he and
other Brexit backers need to tell voters how they planned to
reconcile mutually incompatible promises made during the
referendum campaign over restricted immigration and continued
free trade.
The key leave campaigners made contradictory promises to the
British people, he told ITVs Peston on Sunday. Im sorry to say
that but they did Boris is one of those.
Now they will have to resolve that by explaining how they will
balance the tradeoffs between the different things they promised

which are mutually incompatible. That will be hugely disappointing

to a lot of people in this country who voted leave. How that tradeoff is
made is the key question now for the future prosperity of this
country.
Reports suggested Michael Gove, Johnsons co-figurehead in the
official leave campaign who has laid low since Friday, had called the
former London mayor to formally pledge support to his leadership
bid.
Any delay in officially launching Johnsons run could be in part
because the former London mayor did not anticipate events moving
so fast. One MP campaigning for Britain to leave the EU said that
many on his side had not expected the outcome, insisting: Boris
wanted to succeed David Cameron, not topple him.
Mays difficulty is that she would face the ire of some Brexiters in the
party for her choice to side with the remain side, however low-key
her role. Iain Duncan Smith, a prominent leave supporter, told BBCs
Andrew Marr show that the new Tory leader must be from his wing of
the party.
He said: Whoever takes up that job it would be very, very difficult
for the public who have voted for leaving the European Union to find
that they then had a prime minister who actually was opposed to
leaving the European Union.
May would nonetheless be a serious rival, preventing any Johnson
coronation. According to a poll by the Mail on Sunday newspaper,
while Johnson remains the top pick for Conservative supporters
when presented with a long list of candidates, if the choice is
between just him and May, she edges it by 53% to 47%.

Justine Greening, the international development secretary,

suggested the party should avoid a contest at all and anoint a
Johnson/May joint ticket, in either order.
A leadership contest now is not in the interests of our country,
Greening wrote on the Conservative Home website. It will mean our
party focuses inward at the very time our country most needs us to
focus outward.
This would seem an unpopular choice with others, however, with a
series of Tory MPs looking set to enter the fray, including Liam Fox
and Andrea Leadsom. The pensions secretary, Stephen Crabb, set
out his stall in the Sunday Telegraph, writing about disenchantment
in poorer areas with a political class in Westminster which now
looks the same, dresses the same way, and speaks the same
strange language. The education secretary, Nicky Morgan,
meanwhile took to the Sunday Times to set out an optimistic and
positive one-nation vision.
There is some support for more voices to be heard by delaying the
selection of a two-strong shortlist to be voted on by party members
until after the Conservative annual conference in October. When
Cameron announced he was stepping down on Friday, he said a
new leader should be in place by the conference.
However, Fox suggested this process could be extended. Another
Tory MP, Phillip Lee, told the Guardian he was writing to Graham
Brady, chair of the backbench 1922 committee, to urge that no
shortlist be made before candidates had a chance to present
themselves to the conference, with a new incumbent in place in
November instead.

I dont quite see what the rush is, he said. I think we should take
some time over this it is about the future direction of the country.
As a practising doctor I know that people dont make good decisions
at a time of shock.