Asked if she would like to succeed Theresa May, ex-minister says: ‘Things need to change’

The former education secretary Justine Greening has admitted she wants to succeed Theresa May as prime minister, saying: “Things need to change.”

Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Greening, a leading pro-European who backs a second referendum, said: “I am committed to doing whatever I can to make sure this country, for the first time, is a place where it doesn’t matter where you are growing up, you get the same opportunities.”

Asked if she was making a leadership bid, she said: “Well, things need to change, don’t they, and people need to have some hope for the future that Britain can be a country that runs differently and more fairly.”

Questioned again on whether she would stand for the Conservative leadership if there were a vacancy, Greening said: “I might be prepared to, but I’m more interested in the Conservative party actually showing what it can do for this country.”

Greening suggested the government’s austerity policies had failed to promote equal opportunities.

She said: “Yes, we have to spend a lot of time having to fix the nation’s finances but what we now need to do is discover, maybe rediscover, our own mission, which has got to be how we make sure that young people growing up everywhere in this country have the same access to opportunity. Talent is spread evenly and the challenge with Britain is that opportunity isn’t and that’s what we have got to fix.”

Her comments will fuel ongoing speculation about the prime minister’s future, as the number of MPs backing a leadership contest is believed to be close to the threshold of 48 necessary to trigger a vote. Many of those MPs are known to be hard Brexiters disgruntled with what they see as May’s concessions to the EU.

If she ran as leader, Greening would hope to draw support from the other wing of the party and the majority of Tory MPs who backed remain in the referendum.

Greening resigned from the government after being offered the post of work and pensions secretary in May’s January reshuffle.

Since leaving the cabinet she has been outspoken about the need for the Tories to broaden their appeal to younger, more socially liberal voters. In June, she ruled herself out of the running to be the Conservatives’ candidate for mayor of London.

She told ITV: “We need a guarantee on opportunity for people in country in the same way that we tried to give them guarantees on health … I didn’t have a life mission to come into politics. I just want to see change on the ground, it is as simple as that.”