Prime Minister Theresa May is set to face a vote of no confidence later today, with her Brexit plan hanging in the balance.
MPs triggered the vote after at least 48 letters of no confidence were submitted to the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbencher members.
Speaking outside No 10 today, Prime Minister Theresa May warned that replacing her would delay the Brexit withdrawal process.
During her speech, Theresa May said:
“A change of leadership in the Conservative party now would put our country’s future at risk and create uncertainty when we can least afford it.
A new leader wouldn’t be in place by the 21 January legal deadline, so a leadership election risks handing control of the Brexit negotiations to opposition MPs in parliament.
The new leader wouldn’t have time to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement and get the legislation through parliament by 29 March, so one of their first acts would have to be extending or rescinding article 50, delaying or even stopping Brexit when people want us to get on with it.
And a leadership election would not change the fundamentals of the negotiation, or the parliamentary arithmetic. Weeks spent tearing ourselves apart will only create more division just as we should be standing together to serve our country. None of that would be in the national interest. The only people whose interests would be served would be Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.”
The vote of no confidence comes after the Prime Minister opted to delay the parliamentary vote on her Brexit deal, amid concerns that she had not secured enough support for it to pass.
Potential successors in the running include Dominic Raab, the former government Brexit secretary, Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and Sajid Javid, the home secretary, among others.
The pound sterling fell to a 20-month low on the back of news of the no confidence vote. The pound is currently at 1.25 against the greenback as of 10:22 AM (GMT).