British PM Theresa May under fresh pressure to step down

Grant Shapps, co-chair of Britain's ruling Tory party between 2012 and 2015, claims having the backing of nearly 30 party MPs – including former Cabinet ministers.

He plans to spend the weekend taking that number up to the required 48 MPs to write to the chairman of the Conservative party's powerful 1922 Committee of backbench MPs to trigger a leadership contest within the party. "I think it's time we actually tackle this issue of leadership and so do many colleagues. We wanted to present that to Theresa May privately. Now I'm afraid it's being done a bit more publicly," Shapps told the BBC. May dismissed the brewing dissent as she told reporters that she had the "full support" of her Cabinet. "Now, what the country needs is calm leadership, and that's what I'm providing, with the full support of my cabinet," she said when asked about the efforts led by Shapps to gather sufficient support among Tory MPs to force a leadership contest.

While 61-year-old May's own Cabinet has rallied around her, Shapps accused them of trying to overlook a series of blunders that made May's leadership of the party and the country untenable.

Calls for the British PM's resignation have been growing ever since a doomed general election in June, which lost the Tories their overall majority in Parliament. Most recently, calls for Theresa May to step down have been revived as a result of a disastrous speech at the annual Conservative party conference in Manchester. Her key policy messages were all lost in a series of mishaps including an interruption by a prankster, her own coughing fit and, to make matters worse, a faulty party message sign falling off on stage letter by letter.