The former chairman of the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee told News that telling a Tory leader that their time is up isn’t usually a fun process.
During the 14 years he presided over the powerful group of backbench MPs—a time that included five prime ministers, Brexit, COVID, and the war in Ukraine—he was asked to do it more than once.
He told the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge that Theresa May was the most challenging.
After David Cameron resigned as prime minister in 2016 due to the outcome of the EU vote, she was overthrown three years later by resistance to her Brexit agreement.
We didn’t have a majority in the House of Commons, so it was never going to be simple, but after her 2017 gamble on a quick general election flopped, it went from being extremely tough to being completely impossible, he said.
The former home secretary had to step down on her own initiative after surviving a vote of no confidence, or else the 1922 Committee would change the rules and give her own MPs another chance to remove her.
“I had a number of discussions with her, which ultimately led to the point where she accepted she was going to have to name a date,” said Lord Brady, who resigned as an MP prior to the July election.
