Theresa May has stoked rumours she will offer to resign as prime minister as the price for securing her Brexit deal.
The PM appeared to confirm during Prime Minister’s Questions today she will ask MPs to vote on her deal for a third time on Thursday or Friday.
It comes as MPs will try to seize control of the Brexit agenda by staging a series of “indicative votes” this evening on what different deals could win a majority in the Commons.
May is set to face calls to lay out a timetable for her departure when she faces her backbenchers at a meeting in parliament this afternoon.
Some pro-Brexit Tory MPs are seen as likely to swing behind the withdrawal agreement as long as May is not in charge of negotiating the next stage of the process – the future trade relationship with the EU.
The PM did not dispute she was planning to step aside when challenged on the suggestion by the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford in the Commons.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that the cost the prime minister will pay to force her disastrous deal through is the price of her departure,” he said.
“Yet again another Tory prime minister is willing to ride off into the sunset and saddle us with a crisis in the UK and an extreme right-wing Brexiteer coming into Downing Street. Does the prime minister feel no sense of responsibility for what she is about to do?”
In response, May only said: “It is my sense of responsibility and duty that has meant I have kept working to ensure Brexit is delivered.”
Andrea Leadsom this morning refused to back May to remain as PM after any exit deal was agreed.
The Commons leader told the BBC she was “fully supporting the prime minister to get us out of the European Union”.
Asked if May should stand down after that, the pro-Brexit cabinet minister said: “I think that is a matter for her. I am not expressing a view.”
Speaking to MPs today, the PM also dropped a heavy hint she would soon table another meaningful vote on her deal.
“We can guarantee delivering on Brexit if this week he and others in this House support the deal,” she told one critical Tory backbencher.
Several high-profile Brexiteers, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, have indicated they are now ready to vote in favour of the deal.
But the PM still faces an uphill struggle to get it over the line in the face of continued opposition from a core of hardline Conservatives, as well as the DUP.
May’s deal must be passed by Friday if the UK is to benefit from an automatic delay in the date of Brexit to May 22. If not, it has until April 12 to make new proposals or leave without a deal.