May insists UK cabinet united as Johnson rocks boat on Brexit

Bloomberg

UK Prime Minister Theresa May is battling to assert her authority over a divided Conservative Party as she faces calls to quit as its leader before the next general election.
While May insists she will fight on, a former party chairman said she could not be allowed to stay until the next election in 2022, amid reports that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson believes she will be gone within a year.
In a BBC Television interview on Sunday, May ducked the question over whether Johnson is now impossible to fire after his latest outburst on Brexit, in which he set new demands for the negotiations with the European Union. She insisted Johnson and the rest of her cabinet are agreed on her Brexit policy, which she set out in a speech in Florence, Italy, on September 22.
“What I have is a cabinet that are united in the mission of this government,” May said on the BBC’s “ Andrew Marr Show” before the start of the Conservatives’ annual conference in Manchester, northwest England. “Boris is absolutely behind the Florence speech and the line that we have taken.” May is attending the first gathering of party members and lawmakers since her disastrous decision to call a snap election cost the Conservatives their majority in Parliament in June. The failure of her campaign severely undermined May’s authority over the party, but she insisted in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph newspaper that she will stay on as leader to fight the next election.
The Sunday Times, however, reported that Johnson believes May will be ousted within 12 months. The foreign secretary is himself facing calls for his removal after making his own demands for Brexit policy public, in what was seen as another direct challenge to May’s leadership. The jockeying for May’s job has added uncertainty to negotiations for Britain’s break with the EU. Johnson fed into the confusion when he warned in an interview with the Sun newspaper that he has four “red lines” for May. The transition should be two years and “not a second more,” he said.
On Brexit, the PM said EU leaders had welcomed her Florence speech. While the government is preparing the ground for leaving the EU without a deal, she hopes and expects to be able to reach a good settlement in Brussels, she said.

May’s Tories overhaul campaign strategy
Bloomberg

Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives will overhaul its campaigning strategy after a warning that the next UK general election could happen at any time and it must be ready when it does. “We are making necessary changes to ensure that, working together, we can deliver a majority when the next election comes,” the party chairman, Patrick McLoughlin, told delegates as he opened the Tories’ annual conference in in the northern city Manchester. “We are changing the way that we work.”
The Conservatives published an official review into why they lost their majority in Parliament in the snap election May called in June. While it’s too expensive to put Tory campaign headquarters on a permanent war footing, “we must make sure that we are better prepared for sudden elections going forward,” former minister Eric Pickles said.
The Tories are appointing more local campaign managers around the country “to work hand-in-hand with you to ensure that when the next election comes we are ready,” McLoughlin told activists. “We won’t stop listening.”
Jeremy Corbyn’s main opposition Labour party has already begun preparing for the next vote. Jon Lansman, founder of the pro-Corbyn grassroots Momentum movement, said activists are already targeting Conservative lawmakers in vulnerable seats.
“They need to prepare because we’re in their constituencies now,’’ he told the BBC. “We’re mobilising thousands of people every weekend to go to Tory marginals and unseat Tory MPs.’’
Work on the next set of pledges must begin by June 2018, the report said. With speculation swirling over May’s future as leader, this deadline suggests the question ought to be settled by then. The next election is scheduled for 2022.
May promised again in a Sunday Telegraph interview that she will lead the party into the next general election, though allies of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a potential leadership rival, believe she will be gone within a year.