REUTERS

LONDON

BRITISH Prime Minister David Cameron could be removed as leader of the Conservatives to prevent the party losing power in the next national election, a lawmaker from his party’s right wing warned on Sunday after a heavy defeat in local elections.

Lawmaker Nadine Dorries made her public demand for a leadership contest in a newspaper article published on Sunday, as Cameron struggles to keep his coalition government together after the worst month of his two-year premiership.

A poorly presented budget which appeared to favour the rich, Britain’s return to recession and the loss of 405 seats in last Thursday’s local polls have convinced some Conservatives that Cameron and his finance minister, George Osborne, lack the competence and strategy to win the next national election in 2015.

Dorries, who described Cameron and Osborne last month as “two posh boys” who don’t know the price of milk, said Cameron could face a leadership challenge by Christmas. “Cameron and Osborne should be aware: Conservative MPs will not sleepwalk into losing their seats,” Dorries, whose outspoken comments have earned her the nickname “Mad Nad”, wrote in the Mail on Sunday.

Though Osborne brushed aside her comments, Dorries warned that only 46 of the 305 Conservative lawmakers in the lower house of parliament were needed to call a leadership election.

“I would guess those signatures are already coming in and will reach 46 by Christmas,” she wrote, adding that Cameron’s leadership could provoke a split in the party that would pave the way for Labour to win the next national election.

The most prominent Conservative outside the government is Boris Johnson, who dodged the local poll defeat by winning a second term as London mayor. Tipped as a possible future prime minister, Johnson pointedly made no mention of Cameron in his victory address on Friday after the mayoral election.

Dorries said rightwingers may defect en masse because they are unhappy with Cameron’s attempt to court his pro-European Liberal Democrat coalition partners while shunning any talk of cooperation with the United Kingdom Independence Party, an anti-EU party that saw its support rise in the local election. “If he continues in this vein, the right of the party may well split away, allowing Ed Miliband’s Labour to glide comfortably into No 10 at the next election,” she said.