May averts leadership challenge but fails to win Brexiter support

Theresa May clung to power on Monday and prepared for another key week of Brexit votes in parliament after averting a halfhearted Tory party coup over the weekend.

Amid calls for her resignation, the Prime Minister met high-profile MPs from the right of her party at her Chequers country retreat on Sunday, including Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Iain Duncan Smith.

While she deflected the leadership challenge, her attempts to shore up support for her Brexit deal as she prepares to put it to a vote in the House of Commons for a third time, sources suggested she was unsuccessful after repeating "all the same lines" and failing to add anything new during the three-hour meeting.

May chaired a critical cabinet meeting on Monday morning, where she updated ministers ahead of a House of Commons debate on the next steps for Brexit later in the day, which will be followed by votes on a number of amendments.

One of these amendments calls for the Commons to take over the process of handling Wednesday's indicative votes on Brexit, which could indicate which way forward is closest to achieving a majority.

It had been reported in The Telegraph that cabinet ministers would be shown plans for indicative votes to be held on the PM’s deal but this idea was shelved.

International trade secretary Liam Fox told BBC radio on Monday that the government could ignore the results of any indicative vote as it was against the party manifesto and that the only choice was between May’s deal and no deal.

"I was elected, as 80% of members were, to respect the referendum and leave the European Union. I was also elected on a manifesto that specifically said, no single market and no customs union. That, for Conservative MPs who are honouring the manifesto, limits their room for manoeuvre. And that is part of the reality that restricts us here. The number one constraint is that we contracted out parliament’s sovereignty on the issue of the European Union to the people," said Fox.

The news comes after a weekend awash with rumour and speculation, as well as calls for May to set her own resignation date in exchange for support for her deal, leading some MPs to deny reports of a plot to oust the Prime Minister and Cabinet members Michael Gove, Phillip Hammond and David Liddington to give May their full backing.

Environment Secretary Gove, who is widely tipped as being after the top job, told reporters it was "not the time to change the captain of the ship".

The weekend also saw hundreds of thousands of demonstrators - with some estimates of around one million - descend on Parliament Square to demand a second Brexit referendum, or "people's vote", while a petition to revoke Article 50, in effect cancelling Brexit, even temporarily, topped 5m signatures.