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

  1. Andrew Eacott Reply

    October 18, 2022 at 6:57 pm

    I must say, it’s refreshing to finally agree with my MP on something – Liz Truss is a shambles and needs to go.

    However, a large part of this mess can be attributed to a tiny fraction of the populace selecting a new PM based on policies she couldn’t deliver and for which there was absolutely no mandate. If you want to completely ignore the platform on which your party was elected and radically redefine economic policy, have the decency to go back to the people and ask for their agreement.

    Mind you, I can’t say I’m surprised – this government has form for promising one thing and then doing another.

  2. Ben Paton Reply

    October 19, 2022 at 8:14 am

    And now will Mrs Richardson fall off the fence on the Guildford Local Plan too?

  3. Stuart Barnes Reply

    October 19, 2022 at 10:40 am

    This whole affair appears to be a coup by the Remainers and the lefty MPs that unfortunately remain in the Conservative party. Boris did not clear enough of them out. They comprehensively lost the last leadership election (Hunt was beaten almost contemptuously for instance) and yet somehow seem mysteriously back.

    It makes one wonder if there is any point in voting at all in any election.

  4. Dave Fielding Reply

    October 19, 2022 at 11:18 pm

    Much as I agree with my MP on this issue, I’m not sure you could call her “lefty”. I see that Nigel Farage has called it a coup. I think the coup came years ago when I tiny group of right-wing MPs took over the party. Maybe it’s the end game for them?

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