Tory leader rubbishes resignation rumours
Iain Duncan Smith has vowed to continue on at the helm of the Tory party even if MPs call for a vote of no confidence.
Writing in The Mail on Sunday, he criticised so-called plotters for leaving the party “staring into the abyss.”
Speaking on BBC One’s ‘Breakfast with Frost’ this morning, Mr Duncan Smith downplayed suggestions, published in The Sunday Telegraph, that he would quit if 25 Tory MPs came forward to muster a leadership election.
Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘What I want to make absolutely clear is that I intend to go to the next election and I intend this party to be an alternative government at the next election. The only way to do that is for us to unite around a simple single focus to show how the Government has failed.”
Mr Duncan Smith rejected Sir Patrick Cormack’s request to pre-empt a vote of no confidence.
Instead, he argued: “This party is in the process of being bullied by a small number of people whose personal ambition and personal anger and bitterness is in the process of trying to push the party to the edge of a divisive leadership process which would rip us apart.’
Faced with draining party finances and with several major backers publicly calling for his resignation, Mr Duncan Smith said it would be ‘wrong’ and ‘immoral’ to step down “simply for a donor.”
“The truth is we have got donors coming out saying that they stand by me and don’t want us to go.
“I say to those who hide in the shadows, whose voices are heard out of bitterness and personal ambition, I say that they should go gracefully,” slammed Duncan Smith.
The Sunday Times is saying today that David Maclean, the Tory party chief whip, will tell Duncan Smith next week that his helmsmanship is “unsustainable.”
