Guildford’s MP Calls for PM to Resign and a Further, Fast Track Leadership Election

Published on: 18 Oct, 2022
Updated on: 18 Oct, 2022

Angela Richardson and Liz Truss

By Martin Giles

Guildford’s MP Angela Richardson is calling for Prime Minister Liz Truss to resign and for a new Tory leadership election to be held.

She was one of only five Conservative MPs to put her wish for the PM’s resignation on public record telling The Daily Telegraph yesterday that it would be “better for the party and for the country to have a change in leadership at the top”.

Following a resignation, she believes a truncated leadership election should take place “very quickly” adding, “Whoever comes up top in the ballot, there should be a coronation. MPs should exercise common sense about that. This is a very pivotal point in time where mucking around is just not in the national interest.

“It could be the case that everybody who is frustrated with the PM wants a different outcome – our biggest difficulty is settling on someone.”

But it is reported that a meeting of the officers of the Conservative’s 1922 Committee, which organises leadership elections, decided late on Monday night that there was no need to change rules that currently prevent any new no-confidence vote in the PM until next September.

Current polling gives Liz Truss a favourability rating of minus 70. Just 10 per cent of those polled had a favourable opinion of her, even among Conservative voters the figure only rose to 20 per cent.

Anne Milton the former MP for Guildford

Ms Richardson’s predecessor as Guildford’s MP, Anne Milton, who was effectively deselected from the Conservative party because of her stance on a no-deal Brexit, concurred with Angela Richardson regarding the selection of a new leader saying, “the problem is that there is no candidate around whom they [her erstwhile Tory colleagues] can coalesce.”

She continued: “What the Conservative Party is meant to do is to run the economy well. The protracted leadership election ended up being what should have been an internal argument about the economy, held in public between Sunak and Truss.

“The fact her position is untenable is obvious. Possibly the more important question is whether it is tenable to have yet another PM without a general election. With the opinion polls such as they are the Conservative Party is unlikely to want this but the greater good of the country needs to be considered.”

Guildford General Election result 2019 – Wikipedia

Given Angela Richardson’s much decreased Conservative majority in Guildford in the 2019 general election, it is unlikely that she would be in favour of a general election now even though the party of her main opponent here in Guildford, Liberal Democrat Zoe Franklin, is not, nationally at least, picking up the support being lost by the Conservatives.

Based on polling averages extrapolated in the three weeks to October 15. Smaller parties are not shown. Source politics.co.uk

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