Britain’s May to step down as leader
BREXIT FAILURE The end of May will come in early June
LONDON • Theresa May ended her failed three-year quest to lead Britain out of the European Union on Friday, announcing that she will step down as Conservative Party leader June 7 and triggering a contest to choose a new prime minister who will try to complete Brexit.
“I have done my best,” May said in a speech outside 10 Downing St., as close aides and her husband, Philip, looked on, before acknowledging that it was not good enough.
It had been “the honour of my life” to serve as Britain’s second female prime minister, she said, but after trying and failing three times to deliver a Brexit deal, “it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new prime minister to lead that effort.” It was the sort of set-piece speech that has come to define her premiership, whether announcing Brexit policy or responding to terror attacks.
It had come far sooner than she had hoped — earlier in the week she had spoken of not giving up “the job I love” before her work was done — but she had been left with no other choice after her own ministers and backbench MPS made it clear her time was up.
Concluding her remarks, she struggled to contain her emotions and her voice broke as she expressed “enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.”
May went back inside Downing Street, head bowed, looking utterly alone.
Earlier in the day, Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, and Brandon Lewis, the Conservative Party chairman, stole into Downing Street through a Whitehall entrance to avoid the waiting TV cameras before sitting down with May to discuss her future.
Brady had warned that if May did not set out a timetable for her departure she would probably face a vote of no confidence. But May told him she would announce within the hour that she would resign as Tory party leader on June 7, allowing a contest to choose her replacement to begin on June 10.
“It was a very straightforward meeting,” one source said.
May will stay on as a caretaker prime minister until the new leader is chosen, a process the Conservatives aim to complete by late July. The new party leader will become prime minister without the need for a general election.
She became prime minister the month after the UK voted in June 2016 to leave the European Union, and her premiership has been consumed by the attempt to deliver on that verdict.
May was brought down by Brexit, but her nemesis wasn’t the EU, with which she successfully struck a divorce deal.
She was felled by her own Conservative Party, which refused to accept it. The plan was defeated three times in Parliament, rejected both by pro-eu opposition lawmakers and by Brexit-supporting Conservatives who thought it kept Britain too closely bound to the bloc.
Many Conservative lawmakers came to see May as an obstacle and blamed her for the UK’S failure to leave the EU on the scheduled date of March 29. The bloc has extended that deadline until Oct. 31 in hope Britain’s politicians can break their political deadlock.
The pressure on May reached breaking point this week as House of Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom quit.
Multiple contenders are already jockeying to replace her in a contest that will see a new leader chosen by Conservative lawmakers and party members. The early front-runner is Boris Johnson, a former foreign secretary and strong champion of Brexit.
IT IS IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE COUNTRY FOR A NEW PRIME MINISTER TO LEAD THAT EFFORT.
Johnson, as journalist, commentator and even as foreign secretary, never stopped ribbing Brussels, at one point likening the EU’S insatiable desire for the “ever closer union” of Europe to those of Napoleon and Hitler, albeit by rather less drastic means.
Johnson, as prime minister, would encounter a large degree of awkwardness, and in some quarters outright contempt, in Europe.
To make matters worse, the European side, which believes the Conservative Party has been negotiating with itself for far too much of the Brexit process, can equally see that whoever wins the Tory crown will inevitably have done so by tacking towards a hard Brexit. No candidates, Johnson included, can ignore the Brexit Party’s “better deal or no deal” promise that has left Tories facing a near-wipeout at this week’s EU elections.
The only realistic option for leadership candidates is to stand on a “renegotiate or reject” ticket, a pledge to “renegotiate” the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and then, if the EU does not budge, “reject” it in favour of no deal.