Reports and analysis
May puts her house in order before announcing her departure from No10 in an emotional speech that left her fighting back tears
BEFORE she announced to the nation that her time in office was at an end, Theresa May gave advance notice to perhaps the two most important people in her professional life.
Firstly, she sent a message to the Queen, at whose pleasure she serves as Prime Minister. Then came a phone call to Richard Kellaway, the chairman of the Maidenhead Conservative Association, who represents the party members she serves as an MP.
Only then, when she had ensured that her two political “bosses” were in possession of the facts, did she step out into the sunshine in Downing Street to meet her destiny.
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.
Mrs May had written her resignation speech on Thursday, having decided the day before that she had to make her move before the results of the European elections were fully known on Monday.
Having called her closest advisers into a meeting in Downing Street, she talked over the themes she wanted to cover, enabling them to prepare a draft of the speech for her to work into a final text. One source said: “It was a case of her saying ‘if this is what is going to happen, here’s what I would like to say’, then her staff put it together based on that. It was very personal, as anyone who saw her deliver it could see.”
Mrs May spent Thursday night at her constituency home in Sonning, Berkshire, having knocked on doors that afternoon to get the vote out for the European Parliament elections.
Her official car picked her up after breakfast yesterday, taking her to Downing Street for 8am to make the necessary calls to Mr Kellaway and others before an 8.30am meeting with aides including Gavin Barwell, her chief of staff, Robbie Gibb, her communications secretary, and Jojo Penn, her deputy chief of staff.
Sir 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 Mrs May at 9.15am to discuss her future.
Sir Graham had warned that if Mrs May did not set out a timetable for her departure she would probably face a vote of no confidence. But Mrs 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.
When they left half an hour later, Mrs May had 15 minutes to go over her speech as the final preparations were being made outside.
Larry, the Downing Street cat, was lurking on the doorstep, ready to play an impromptu role in the drama. A policeman opened the door, picked him up and took him inside to ensure the PM would not trip over him.
By 9.50am the lectern was in place and, moments later, a “Praetorian Guard” of six trusted confidants filed on to the pavement to give Mrs May moral support as she faced the dozens of waiting photographers, journalists and television cameras.
Alongside her husband, Philip, were Mr Gibb, Mr Barwell, Mrs May’s parliamentary private secretary Andrew Bowie MP, her special adviser Natasha Adkins and Victoria Busby, a civil servant who has been with her throughout her time at No10.
The remainder of her staff watched the speech on televisions inside the building.
Mrs May emerged just after 10am, trying to strike a tone of defiance as she listed what she regarded as her successes, but there were audible gasps in Downing Street as Mrs May ended her speech on the brink of tears, losing her composure as she spoke of serving “the country I love”.
“Even for people who knew what she was going to say, it still felt like a bit of a shock to actually listen to her say it,” one insider observed.
Mrs May went back inside, head bowed, looking utterly alone. Where David Cameron had hummed jauntily as he crossed the same threshold following his own resignation in 2016, Mrs May looked broken.
Her final task of the day was to briefly address and thank a meeting of Downing Street special advisers before leaving No 10 at about 10.50am to return to Sonning and the sanctuary of home.
Mrs May’s time as Prime Minister will end in July once a successor is in place, but she had already signalled in her morning phone call to Mr Kellaway that she will stay on as a backbench MP.
“The main concern for us, as her [party] association, is that she’s not going to resign her seat,” he said.
“She will carry on as a Member of Parliament, which is welcomed by us.”
One close friend of the Prime Minister said: “Ultimately she is, and always has been, a constituency MP. She would never let her constituents down, and there is no way she would lumber the Conservative Party with a by-election.
“She will go back to being a diligent local MP and campaign for issues that are close to her heart like modern slavery and domestic violence.”
Another ally said: “Even when she comes back from long-haul foreign trips, she will head straight to her constituency to attend local events because she loves her constituency work.
“To be honest, she doesn’t have much of a hinterland so it’s difficult to see what she would do if she doesn’t stay in Parliament, apart from a lot more walking holidays.”
Asked what Mrs May would do at the next general election, Mr Kellaway suggested she could become a peer.
“I would assume she would consider what she wants to do,” he said. “As the [former] prime minister, she could go to the House of Lords if she wants to go that route and carry on, or she could stay a Member of Parliament.”
As her successor stands at the Dispatch Box in the House of Commons in a few weeks’ time, Mrs May will be sitting somewhere behind, out of view but a permanent warning of what will await if the Tories cannot break the Gordian Knot that Brexit has become.
‘Even for people who knew what she was going to say, it still felt like a bit of a shock to actually listen to it’