Prime Minister May is resigning, throwing wrench in Brexit effort
She’s due to step down after Trump visits next month, setting off politically charged summer in U.K.
LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May announced her resignation Friday after three years of trying and failing to pull Britain out of the European Union, throwing her country into an unpredictable situation and setting off a bareknuckled contest among other Conservative lawmakers to replace her.
As she stood behind a lectern outside No. 10 Downing St., May admitted that a different leader was needed to shepherd the split, known as Brexit. But she also warned that the unyielding stance taken by the hard-line factions of lawmakers who had proved her undoing would have to change.
“To succeed, he or she will have to find consensus in Parliament where I have not,” May said. “Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise.”
Whether such compromise is even possible in Britain’s polarized politics is unclear at best.
Brexit has splintered both the Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party into warring factions since the referendum that narrowly approved the departure on June 23, 2016. A second referendum that could keep Britain in the European Union remains a distant possibility.
But many Conservative lawmakers have grown more hard-line during May’s long, fractious tenure and now support leaving the bloc with no withdrawal deal at all — a move opposed by a majority in Parliament and one that most analysts warn could bring dire economic consequences.
May’s departure, eagerly anticipated even by members of her own Cabinet, is certain to mean a politically charged summer in Britain. May said she would step down as Conservative Party leader June 7, a few days after President Donald Trump makes an official state visit. The contest to succeed her will begin the following week, and May will remain in office until her successor is chosen.
Brexit, meanwhile, will remain in a state of suspended animation until a new leader is chosen. Britain was originally scheduled to leave the European bloc on March 29, but the deadline was extended to Oct. 31 after Parliament refused three times to pass the withdrawal agreement that May had negotiated with European leaders.
Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and a hard-line supporter of Brexit, on Friday signaled an unflinching attitude, foreshadowing the tone for a leadership contest. He is a leading contender to replace May.
“We will leave the EU on Oct. 31, deal or no deal,” Johnson told an economic conference. “The way to get a good deal is to prepare for a no deal.”
Opposition figures relished May’s departure. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, who has sparred relentlessly with the prime minister in the House of Commons, described her resignation as an indictment of a Conservative Party riven for decades by the issue of Britain’s membership in the European Union.
Corbyn said she had “now accepted what the country has known for months: She cannot govern, and nor can her divided and disintegrating party.”
Lawmakers from May’s own side were more generous, despite many of them having been involved in backroom machinations to oust her and having already begun campaigning in private to succeed her. May’s government — deeply divided, and sometimes chaotic — suffered around three dozen ministerial resignations during her tenure.
Andrea Leadsom, who only two days earlier quit May’s Cabinet to protest her latest effort to revamp her Brexit plan, said the prime minister’s departure was “an illustration of her total commitment to country and duty.” Leadsom, a proBrexit lawmaker, is likely to be among the crowded field of contenders for her job.
To decide the leadership contest, Conservative Party lawmakers will first winnow a long list of contenders to two, then hand the choice to the party’s roughly 120,000 members, who largely favor a nodeal exit and are expected to choose the new leader around July.
That will leave the new prime minister only a few months to try to rebuild the wreckage of May’s deal — and then decide what to do if that fails.