IDS to fight on
Responding to the impending vote of confidence in his leadership, triggered earlier this afternoon, Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith warned MPs that a change of leadership would ‘gravely imperil the party’s prospects at the next election’.
It was announced that the 25 letters to the 1922 Committee Chairman Sir Michael Spicer necessary to trigger a vote had been received at around 2pm today.
Delivering a statement outside Conservative Central Office at 2.35pm, Mr Duncan Smith stated that ‘I will absolutely submit my name for a new mandate’.
He appealed to his colleagues, stressing that the party has an ‘unrivalled opportunity’ to take the fight to the Labour government, which is suffering with the lowest approval ratings since 1997.
He undertook to address the 1922 Committee tomorrow, to make the case for his leadership in order to ‘put an end finally once and for to the speculation that has been sapping away at this party’.
At the time, only four MPs had gone public in having submitted letters: Francis Maude, John Greenway, Derek Conway and Crispin Blunt.
To win the vote of confidence, Mr Duncan Smith requires an absolute majority of Tory MPs to support him – that is 83 of 165.
The vote is due to take place at the meeting of the 1922 Committee tomorrow evening.
