Pressure for new confidence vote if PM May does not set exit date: 1922 treasurer

If Prime Minister Theresa May does not set a resignation date on Friday there will be overwhelming pressure to change the Conservative Party`s rules over when her leadership can be challenged, the treasury of the party`s influential 1922 Committee was quoted as saying.

May survived a confidence vote in December and under current rules cannot be challenged again for 12 months. The 1922 Committee executive have so far decided against forcing through a change but the panel`s chair is due to meet May on Friday. 

"I want her to give a timetable for when she will go. I think this blank denial from Number 10 today may be a smokescreen because she does not want to influence the outcome of the European elections. Maybe she will still quit tomorrow," Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the 1922 Committee told the Press Association, according the Guardian.

Asked what would happen if she did not announce a resignation date, he said: "There will be overwhelming pressure for the 22 to change the rules and hold a ballot on confidence in the prime minister."