May tells her lawmakers she’ll stay as long as they want her
london — Theresa May told Conservative lawmakers on Monday she would serve as prime minister as long as they wanted her after a botched election gamble cost the party its majority in parliament and weakened Britain’s hand days before formal Brexit negotiations.
With British politics thrust into the deepest turmoil since last June’s shock Brexit vote, EU leaders were left wondering how divorce talks would open next week.
Despite her party’s expectations of a landslide victory May lost her majority in parliament, pushing her into rushed talks on a support agreement with a small eurosceptic Northern Irish Protestant party with 10 parliamentary seats.
May faced her lawmakers at a meeting of the 1922 Committee on Monday. Despite anger at the election, she was cheered briefly at the start of the meeting, Reuters reporters said.
“She said ‘I’m the person who got us into this mess and I’m the one who is going to get us out of it,’” one Conservative lawmaker said after the meeting.
“She said she will serve us as long as we want her.”
May plans a clean break from the EU, involving withdrawal from Europe’s single market and customs union and limits on immigration from the EU.
Her spokesman insisted her position on Brexit remained unchanged but Scottish Conservatives were pushing for her to move the focus onto economic growth and away from immigration, sources in the Scottish branch of party said.
EU talks might not begin on June 19 as expected, Brexit minister David Davis said and the Queen’s Speech, due on the same day in which the government traditionally spells out its policy plans, has also been delayed, the BBC reported.
May’s spokesman said it remained government policy to cut net migration to under 100,000 and Brexit Minister David Davis also said walking away without securing a deal with the remaining 27 EU states remained a possibility.
Before the government can do anything it must finalise a deal with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). May is due to meet its leader Arlene Foster on Tuesday.
In an article in the Belfast Telegraph, Foster listed three priorities, including getting Northern Ireland’s devolved power-sharing government at Stormont working again. “We stood on a clear policy platform of wanting to strengthen
We are working with the duP in order to reach a deal that will allow the safe passage of the Queen’s speech May’s spokesman
the Union, of working for a good deal for Northern Ireland as the United Kingdom leaves the EU, and of promising to do our best to get Stormont up and running again for the benefit of all,” Foster wrote.
“We will use the position we find ourselves in to do as we promised.” Davis, who said that some policies in the government’s programme would now be pruned back, was one of a number of senior Conservatives to publicly pledge loyalty to May. —