PETE Wishart has called on the Prime Minister to resign “and let Scotland go too”.
The SNP frontbencher pointed to poor opinion polling figures for the Conservatives when he quizzed Theresa May yesterday in the Commons on her future as PM.
A YouGov poll last weekend suggested the Tories were on course to plummet to fifth place taking just 10% of the UK vote, with Leave voters switching to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party to win 34%.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions Wishart, the SNP’s shadow Commons leader, said: “The Government can barely double figures in the opinion polls. The UK now an international laughing stock, with her backbench just wanting her gone, as does the nation.
“She is now going to bring back her Withdrawal Agreement for a fourth time as her backbench queue up to say they won’t support her.
“Has the road not just now run out Prime Minister? For the sake of her nation will she please just go and let Scotland go too.”
The Prime Minister avoided the question on her own future, and replied: “It is in the interests of Scotland that it remains part of the United Kingdom and it is in the interest of the whole of the United Kingdom that we deliver on what people voted for in the referendum and deliver Brexit.”
Later at PMQs, in a humiliating blow to May, Tory Brexiteer Sir Peter Bone told her party activists want her to quit within the next week.
The backbencher said members in his Wellingborough and Rushden constituency want her to step down before the European elections on 23 May.
He said he had joined some members on Saturday as they went door-knocking ahead of polling day, and they had given him a letter to pass to the Prime Minister.
“They say that her deal is worse than staying in the European Union; they want us to come out now on a no-deal basis,” he explained. “More importantly, they’ve lost confidence in the Prime Minister and wish her to resign before the European elections. Prime Minister: what message do you have to say to these dedicated and loyal Conservatives?”
May thanked the activists for their help and insisted the Government was trying to deliver Brexit but MPs were thwarting the process.
“This is a government that wants to deliver Brexit and has been working to deliver Brexit,” she said.
“Sadly, so far, the House of Commons has not found a majority to do that. If everybody in the House of Commons had voted alongside with the Government and the majority of Conservative members of Parliament, we would already have left the European Union.”
The exchanges come after May announced her deal would be put to the Commons once more in the first week of June. It has already been rejected three times.
Tory MPs and the DUP are against the so-called ‘backstop’ plan to protect an open border in Northern Ireland. The “backstop” is effectively an insurance policy to make sure the border remains open whatever the outcome of the UK and the EU’s future relationship talks by keeping the UK closely aligned to EU customs rules, with some regulatory differences between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
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