Theresa May Resigns
UK PM Theresa May has announced she will be stepping down effective June 7th.
In an emotional statement, she said she had done her best to deliver Brexit and it was a matter of “deep regret” that she had been unable to do so.
Being prime minister had been the “honour of my life”, she said.
Mrs May said she would continue to serve as PM while a Conservative leadership contest takes place.
It means she will still be prime minister when US President Donald Trump makes his state visit to the UK at the start of June.
Mrs May announced she would step down as Tory leader on 7 June and had agreed with the chairman of Tory backbenchers that a leadership contest should begin the following week.
Boris Johnson, Esther McVey and Rory Stewart have said they intend to run for the party leadership, while more than a dozen others are believed to be seriously considering entering the contest.
The prime minister has faced a backlash from her MPs against her latest Brexit plan, which included concessions aimed at attracting cross-party support.
She couldn’t deliver on BREXIT because it was built on lies and those lies eventually caught up to her – though I do t think she actually lied. Sadly this is not a courageous move.Report
^^^This. Her administration, I think, is guilty of negotiating in bad faith with the EU, and guilty of having the audacity to think that they could dictate terms to the same. I admit that I’m a little bit amused that it’s the Irish question that again plagues England (really not England but the whole of the UK, but yeah). Irish unification may be the only real solution. Otherwise we could see the return of The Troubles.Report
Honestly, given all the grief she’s gotten over this, I’m amazed she never walked into Parliament, dropped trou and mooned the place, then walked out flipping every the bird with both hands while calling out, “Fuck you, bitches!”Report
In the world we live in, where the American President has members of his staff line up to declare that he is not mad, such a thing would seem completely normal.Report
Except that she kind of signed up for this – everyone including May knew that no decent Brexit deal was going to happen, and she claimed she could make a good one work or else she couldn’t have become PM.
Basically she signed up for a job knowing, or at least predicting it was very likely, that she was going to catch a bunch of grief for a couple of years and then have to resign in disgrace.Report
Oh, I know, I’m just amazed she lasted this long.Report
Well she lasted this long because she prioritized lasting as long as possible over getting any kind of deal or resolution to Brexit.Report
The only real option was a hard BREXIT. No matter how she tried she couldn’t keep all the goodies, including the open Irish border, without staying.Report
I cannot interpret this other than you think she is insane. Did she run over your dog or something?Report
I’m sure she’s quite sane.
I suspect she wanted to be PM because she had goals other than Brexit to accomplish (I don’t know to what extent she did get those things done), and being of course a dedicated Tory, she wasn’t about to let Labour have the helm, even if it left her with a not especially glowing public image after retirement.
Everyone who wanted a shot at government had to claim to have an excellent and workable plan for a Brexit deal that would involve unrealistically few concessions from the UK and unrealistically many from the EU. Everyone who had a shot at government knew perfectly well they didn’t. Nobody was willing to say this publicly because it would have guaranteed the other party formed government.
I think the “leave” side in the Brexit debate was insane – not composed of individually insane people, but institutionally functioning as one insane entity.Report
Based upon listening to several months of TalkPolitics podcast at the recommendation of one of the contributors here, I think that the basic strategic framework she operated under made sense:
1) Leave voters are significant in the most competitive constituencies fought btw/ Labour and the Conservatives, and both parties agreed to honor the referendum, so the question would ultimately be under what terms Britain leave.
2) Once the issue is down to deal or no-deal leave, then the deal, any deal, would be approved, with even some Labour MPs in competive districts giving support.
Getting to the second point seems to have escaped her, and its either her personally, or something fundamental has changed about UK politics, e.g., Fixed Term Parliament Act and Devolution. Her government should have failed long ago, or the threat of its failure would have enforced party/coalition discipline.Report
Here’s hoping many further Tories reap the same bitter harvest she is. They’ve sown enough.
Here’s also hoping that antisemite clown Corbyn follows on her heels shortly.Report
In retrospect, it seems preordained when the Conservatives lost seats in the 2017 snap election, that her hand in the party and to negotiate a deal had been fatally weakened. Nothing appears to have really changed since, except feelings have hardened and third-party proxies have emerged that only appear to be viable threats so long as Brexit is not finished.Report
The only things I know about Brexit are that the propaganda campaign advocating for it was based on lies and disinformation and that once passed parliament couldn’t agree on the terms of the exit.
The only things I know about May are that she was criticized for not delivering the impossible and that she’s a terrible dancer.Report
As Hugo Rifkind put it – May’s predicament is basically that 52 of British people voted that the government should build a submarine out of cheese. Then anybody who wanted to be prime minister had to promise an excellent cheese submarine, which May duly promised. Of course she’s not an idiot and so knew that whatever she built would be terrible.
All parties – every MP in opposition or government – knew that no decent submarine can be made of cheese. But they’re not about to give any quarter, so they’re all pretending that they could have made a much better cheese submarine and that it’s totally because of May’s incompetence that her cheese submarine is terrible.Report
Good morning, Sir. Welcome to the National Cheese Submarine Emporium!
Ah, thank you, my good man.
What can I do for you, Sir?
Well…Report
Well, from a cheese engineering standpoint, focusing on cheddars, the highest measurement of stress at fracture in compression was 91.2 kPa, or 13.2 psi. As long as the submarine stays really shallow, it might work, but going deep is out of the question.Report
I am really delighted at the existence of that paper!Report
C: Aah, how about Cheddar?
O: Well, we don’t get much call for it around here, sir.
C: Not much ca–It’s the single most popular cheese in the world!
O: Not ’round here, sir.Report
I’m more worried about the important resident of 10 Downing Street, Larry, Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. He’s 12 years old and won’t be around much longer, and Palmerston, the Foreign Office’s cat at Whitehall, has been in a fight with him before, suffering some ear damage in the scuffle. Palmerston is only four and quite a ruthless killer. Last year he nabbed a duckling.
The Chief Mouser doesn’t leave when the leadership changes hands, but he might retire at any time. Will Palmerston be the one to replace him at Downing Street?Report
No one can deliver on Brexit because everyone who supports it has a different and inchoate idea on what Brexit means plus the E.U. is pissed and there is no reason or incentive for them to play nice. The situation is not helped because May is ostensibly pro-Remain but was chosen to lead the True Blue Tories. Ironically Corbyn is a soft leaver but his party is overwhelmingly pro-Remain.
May was given this job because she is a woman and men are usually good at making women clean up their messes and then coming in when it is all done. This is a mess that can’t be cleaned up.
I don’t have much sympathy for her. Her track record on Brexit was to propose the same thing over and over again and see it fail.Report
As noted above, she really had no other choice.Report
“she left before the rubble fell on her”Report
The scary thought is who replaces her. Johnson is a clown. And if the next election goes badly, we could get Corbyn, one of the most vile people in politics.Report
I hear that many Brits want the sound guy who set up the podium for her resignation speech.Report
Brexit is impossible to deliver as it was based on fears and half-truths, Europe is stronger when unitedReport