The home secretary has called on the Conservative Party to avoid infighting at the October conference and a former minister from the Thatcher era has called on the cabinet to “shut up, grow up”.
Amber Rudd told Sky News that the plotting should stop after the summer break. “I’m hopeful that after a holiday — whether rafting or otherwise — we can all calm down and get on with the job in hand.”
Sir Robert Atkins, who served in the Thatcher and Major administrations and is now chairman of the Conservatives in northwest England, said that some “childish and disloyal” cabinet ministers “whose ambitions far exceed their abilities” were behaving like “ferrets in a sack” as they jockeyed to succeed Mrs May as leader.
He said that ministers should “concentrate on doing the job for which they were elected — namely, running the country”.
The senior activist, who was an MP for 18 years and an MEP for 15, did not name the ministers he blames for a rash of leaks from cabinet. But he said: “The Conservative membership in my region — and, I think, elsewhere — is, of course, very unhappy with the result of the general election and the manner in which the campaign was conducted.
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“They want the party hierarchy to listen and to change, sooner rather than later.
“What they do not want and do not like is for certain senior people who should know better to be on constant ‘manoeuvres’ around the party, jockeying for leadership positions and generally being childish and disloyal.
“The Conservative Party in government has an excellent historic reputation for command and control, leavened by competence. So let’s see more of that and less of the backbiting and off-the-record briefing. There is a prime minister in place and much work to be done. Get on with it.”
Ms Rudd said that she found reports of infighting perplexing. “We have frank and full discussions and then we agree what the position is, and then we go out and deliver on it, which is how cabinet should operate,” Ms Rudd told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
She rejected suggestions that Mrs May had lost her authority as a result of the botched election, insisting: “She is respected by the cabinet, she is our prime minister, we do have 54 more seats than Labour and we are getting on with the job in hand.”
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She dismissed Dominic Cummings’s description of Mr Davis as “thick as mince and lazy as a toad”.
“David Davis is doing a great job,” she said. “We all support him in cabinet. He is out doing one of the most difficult jobs and I’ve been very impressed by how he has been handling it.”
Responding to a suggestion by the former prime minister David Cameron that some ministers should be strapped to a raft and sent down a “very, very dangerous” river, Ms Rudd said: “I’m not too good at rafting, so I won’t be volunteering for that.”
Asked whether members of the cabinet were seeking to undermine Mr Hammond because they regarded his vision of Brexit as too “soft”, Ms Rudd told Sky News: “The cabinet is united in wanting to make sure that we deliver a Brexit that does protect the economy, that does protect businesses. Philip Hammond has talked about that and he is absolutely right to do so.
“He and the prime minister have been discussing the fact that we may need to have a transition or an implementation phase of a fixed period. That will depend on the negotiations with the EU.
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“Above all, even having that on the table as part of the considerations is set to reassure businesses and employers that there won’t be a cliff edge in this negotiation and in the way we leave the EU.
“We want to make sure that we have a soft landing, that we protect jobs and businesses and employers to make sure that the economy of the UK remains robust.”
Mrs May will lay down the law to her cabinet after a series of vicious leaks targeting Mr Hammond.
The chancellor has blamed the attacks on rivals opposed to his stance on Brexit; one ministerial colleague has accused Mr Hammond of trying to “f*** up” the process of leaving the European Union.
Brexit negotiations in Brussels will continue, with senior officials set to begin addressing the difficult issue of how to deal with the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.