History of the Conservative Party (UK) Foreign affairs select committee described the lack of planning as "gross negligence" which made his successor's task much more difficult. In July 2016 Theresa May succeeded David Cameron as Tory Leader and Prime Minister following Andrea Leadsom's withdrawal from the leadership contest. She is the second woman to lead the party and subsequently the second female Prime Minister, following Margaret Thatcher. With the support of 199/320 Conservative MPs, May was seen as the most experienced figure who could unite the party after a bitter campaign in which Michael Gove, a supporter and running mate of Boris Johnson, publicly declared Johnson
Racism in the UK Conservative Party Griffin, was sacked from the party due to his support for his son's far-right British National Party. Griffin claimed to have rank and file Tory support for his views, which included financial subsidies for "the coloured folk" to leave the UK. This, combined with Conservative MP John Townend's claim that immigrants were "undermin[ing]" the purity of Britain's "homogeneous Anglo-Saxon society" and were causing a rise in crime rates across the UK led Conservative MP Andrew Lansley to say that there was "endemic racism in the Tory party". As editor of "The Spectator", Boris Johnson was strongly criticised for allowing columnist