Lord Graham Brady's reputation for snubbing prime ministers has made him something of a star in the world of politics.
But telling a Tory leader his time is up is not always a pleasant task, a former chairman of the 1922 Conservative Party Committee told Sky News.
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This has been asked of him more than once during his 14 years leading an influential group of backbench MPs, during a period that has seen five prime ministers, Brexit, Covid and the war in Ukraine.
The hardest thing, he said Political center from Sophy RidgeTheresa May was.
She became prime minister in 2016, after David Cameron resigned over the EU referendum result, and was ousted three years later by opposition to her Brexit deal.
It was never going to be easy, but after her gamble on a snap general election in 2017 backfired, “it went from being very difficult to being completely impossible because we didn't have a majority in the House of Commons,” he said.
“It has become clear that Theresa May has been unable to deliver on the central aim of her government.
“And I think it was obvious to almost all of my colleagues that she was going to have to go.”
However, as she had already survived a vote of no confidence, the former Home Secretary had to resign from her position herself – or face the 1922 Committee changing the rules to give her MPs another chance to throw her out of Parliament.
Lord Brady, who resigned as an MP before the July election, said: “I had a number of conversations with her which ultimately led to her agreeing that she would have to set a date to leave and that was the most painful thing.”
He added that this was “obviously a very difficult point for Mrs May”, who tendered a tearful resignation in May 2019, “and it was something I didn't enjoy.”
“But I tried to get to a point where her passing would be less bloody and less traumatic than it otherwise might have been,” he said.
For Liz Truss, who became the so-called the longest-serving Prime Minister in modern British history after her disastrous mini-budget spooked the markets and turned public opinion and her party against her.
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Although he has since shown no remorse, blaming his decline on things like the “deep state”.She knew she was done when Lord Brady knocked, he said.
“When I went to her and told her I thought the time was up, she agreed.
“It was a very easy conversation.”
He added: “If she had not resigned that day, I think we would have passed a vote of confidence on this and I strongly suspect she would have lost it.
“It actually got to the point where she came to the same conclusion as me and others, that there was just no way to get everything back on the road and functioning.”
As for Boris Johnson, who faced a vote of confidence over the party scandal, Lord Brady said those who set the rules should stick to them.
“The fact that Boris presided over these constantly changing, incredibly complicated (COVID) rules and guidelines, which was the ultimate irony, that that was what then ensnared him,” he said.
