May selects cabinet aMid ouster plots
Johnson denies leadership challenge
london — Embattled British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed ministers to her shaky government on Sunday as some Conservative colleagues said her days were numbered after last week’s disastrous election.
May is seeking a deal with a Northern Irish party to prop up the Conservative minority government, and lawmakers said the rebuff from voters meant the government would have to abandon planned policies and re-think its strategy for European Union exit talks.
A stream of senior lawmakers entered her office at 10 Downing Street on Sunday afternoon, to learn what roles they had been given in government.
May’s weakened position in the party rules out big changes to the Cabinet lineup. Downing Street has already said that the most senior ministers — including Treasury chief Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Amber Rudd — will keep their jobs.
As rumours swirled about plots to oust May, Johnson denied he was planning a leadership challenge. He tweeted that an article in the Mail on Sunday newspaper headlined “Boris set to launch bid to be PM as May clings on” was “tripe”. “I am backing Theresa May. Let’s get on with the job,” he said.
The Conservatives lost their parliamentary majority in Thursday’s election — a vote May called in a bid to strengthen her mandate ahead of exit talks with the EU. Instead, she has left Britain’s government ranks in disarray, days before the divorce negotiations are due to start on June 19. —
It is quite possible there will be an election later this year or early next year and that might be a good thing because we cannot go on with a period of great instability Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader
Theresa May is a dead woman walking. It’s just how long she’s going to remain on death row George Osborne, ex-finance minister
I just can’t see how she can continue in any longterm way. I think she will have to go unfortunately Anna Soubry, Conservative lawmaker
london — British Prime Minister Theresa May was on Sunday seeking a deal with a small Northern Irish party that she needs to stay in power after a disastrous election destroyed her authority days before Brexit talks are due to start.
May’s grip on power was tenuous after she gambled away a parliamentary majority in an election she did not need to call. Conservative Party loyalists urged her to change her leadership style, while critics talked about her days being numbered.
“Theresa May is a dead woman walking. It’s just how long she’s going to remain on death row,” former Conservative finance minister George Osborne, who was sacked by May when she became prime minister last year, told the BBC.
The Conservatives won 318 House of Commons seats in Thursday’s election, eight short of an outright majority. Labour, the main opposition party, won 262.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he could still be prime minister, although his party has no obvious way to build a majority coalition. He said a new election might be necessary later this year or early in 2018.
The political turmoil comes a week before Britain is due to start negotiating the terms of its exit from the European Union in talks of unprecedented complexity that are supposed to wrap up by the end of March 2019, when Britain actually leaves.
That timeline now looks even more ambitious than before, not least because May’s electoral debacle has emboldened those within her own party who object to her “hard Brexit” approach of leaving the European single market and customs union.
May’s only hope of forming a government now is to win support from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which won 10 seats. She is seeking a so-called confidence and supply deal, which would involve the DUP supporting the Conservatives on key votes but not joining a formal coalition.
DUP leader Arlene Foster told Sky News she would meet May on Tuesday.
The prospect of being propped up by the socially conservative DUP, which is strongly focused on Northern Ireland’s specific political complexities, was causing concerns in the Conservative party, senior lawmaker Graham Brady said. “I think there is concern about the policies of the DUP, the domestic policies in Northern Ireland, but I think it’s pretty clear that any arrangement that is reached is not going to be a full coalition,” he told BBC Radio 4.
The DUP is strongly opposed to single-sex marriage and abortion, which is at odds with Conservative policies.
Meanwhile, May suffered a further setback on Sunday in her efforts to stay in power after Dublin warned that her plans to form an alliance with a Northern Irish party could upset the province’s fragile peace.
In a phone call, Irish premier Enda Kenny told May that forming a minority government reliant on the support of the hardline Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) could pose a “challenge” to the 1998 Good Friday peace accords.
The future of the proposed alliance had already been thrown into confusion late Saturday after May’s office announced that an outline agreement had been struck, only to backtrack and say that talks were still ongoing. “The taoiseach (Kenny) indicated his concern that nothing should happen to put the Good Friday Agreement at risk and the challenge that this agreement will bring,” an Irish government spokesman said. London’s neutrality is key to the delicate balance of power in Northern Ireland, which was once plagued by violence over Britain’s control of the province.