Esther McVey has said she believes it would be “very difficult” for Theresa May to stay on as prime minister if she failed to renegotiate the Brexit deal – and refused to rule out running for the top job if a vacancy arose.
Giving her first television interview since she resigned as work and pensions secretary last month, McVey said May also had to withhold paying the £39bn divorce bill, and if she could not renegotiate on that and the backstop the UK should go for a no-deal Brexit instead.
Asked if May should stay on as prime minister given the Brexit deal she has negotiated, the former minister said that if May “goes out and gets this deal we want on those key points then she will remain as our prime minister”, adding: “iIf she doesn’t it is going to be very difficult for her.”
May is battling to get the Brexit vote through parliament on Tuesday, with 100 Conservative MPs, including McVey, saying they will vote against it. Despite repeated rumours of delay, the junior minister Kwasi Kwarteng said the vote would take place, adding: “I think we have a good shot at winning.”
However, few in Westminster believe the prime minister has a chance unless she can come up with significant concessions before then, prompting speculation that she could be out as soon as Tuesday night depending on the scale of any defeat.
McVey did not rule out running for the leadership herself, saying she would do so “if people asked me”. But she said she was “looking for a person who can unite the party behind the Brexit deal” and said Brexiters should get behind one candidate, although she did not name anybody in particular.
“At the moment I’m looking at who is in papers, who we can get behind, but it shouldn’t be about the personality, it should be about the country and this deal.”
McVey resigned last month a day after a stormy five-hour cabinet meeting that had been asked to sign off the legally binding withdrawal agreement negotiated with Brussels. She told Sophy Ridge on Sky News she had demanded a vote in cabinet “on the most crucial issue of a generation”.
The former minister denied she had a “meltdown”, as had been suggested by leaks from the cabinet meeting, and said she was a “straight talker”, adding: “If there was a meltdown it was from people not wanting to put their names to a vote.”
The shadow Cabinet Office minister, Jon Trickett, refused to confirm that Labour would table a confidence motion in the prime minister if she loses the Brexit vote, saying: “Let’s see what happens”.
He told Ridge on Sunday: “If you can tell me whether she will still be prime minister on Tuesday evening, then perhaps I can tell you what exactly we will do next.”
Labour’s policy is to call for a general election, but if that is not possible then all options – including a second referendum – remain open.
Trickett said passing legislation and organising another referendum may take until May or June 2019, after the UK’s scheduled exit from the EU on 29 March.
And he warned: “If people feel that the privileged political elite has decided by subterfuge to find a way of reversing the previous referendum, that would cause us some difficulty, and rightly so.”
The Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, later insisted the vote would happen on Tuesday. “The vote is going ahead,” he told BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. “That’s because it is a good deal, it’s the only deal and it’s important we don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Barclay said “we are making the case” for the deal, after being challenged on whether the prime minister was heading for defeat.
Insisting that there would be no further negotiations with Brussels, he said: “The risk for those who say simply go back and ask again, the risk is that isn’t necessarily a one-way street.
“The French, the Spanish and others will turn round, if we seek to reopen the negotiation, and ask for more.”