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By SJA Jafri + Agencies
MELBOURNE/ LONDON: UK Prime Minister Theresa May has announced her resignation today after pressure on her to quit reached a critical point following her failure to win support for her Brexit deal.
The Conservative leader said she would stand down as Tory party leader on June 7.
“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,” said May.
“So I am today announcing that I will resign as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party on Friday the 7th of June.”
Her announcement came after she met with the chairman of the party’s key backbench committee in London on Friday morning, local time.
The 1922 Committee set the showdown meeting for May, who agreed to set a departure timetable rather than face a leadership challenge.
May has repeatedly failed to win the UK Parliament’s approval for a European Union divorce deal, and this week she faced a mutiny when a senior minister quit and Cabinet colleagues expressed doubts her latest bill would pass.
Several British media outlets reported that May would agree to give up the prime minister’s post on June 10, sparking a Conservative leadership contest. She may then stay in office as a caretaker prime minister until Tory MPs and members choose a successor.
The humiliating spectacle of the prime minister detailing her departure date follows a toxic response to her latest Brexit plan this week from cabinet colleagues and Conservative MPs.
May has previously said she would step aside once a Brexit deal had been passed by parliament, and launched a fresh bid on Tuesday for politicians to vote on a revised bill in early June. The government has now postponed that vote.
MPs have already overwhelmingly rejected her EU divorce plan, agreed with European leaders last year, three times.
Her latest proposals, which included giving them the option of choosing to hold a second referendum on Brexit to agree a deal, prompted a furious reaction among Conservatives.
Pressure intensified on May after Andrea Leadsom — one of cabinet’s strongest Brexit backers — resigned on Wednesday from her post as the government’s representative in parliament.
In her resignation letter, Ms Leadsom told the prime minister she no longer believed that her approach would deliver on the 2016 referendum result to leave the EU.
After months of political paralysis over Brexit, the clamour for the PM to stand down has been growing, and intensified after disastrous results in the May 2 English local elections.
The Conservatives are expected to fare similarly badly in this week’s European Parliament elections when the results are announced late Sunday, when they are projected to come fifth, behind the Green Party.
The leadership battle could take about six weeks, during which time May may try to pass some of the less controversial parts of her Brexit deal. She is also set to meet with Donald Trump during his state visit to the UK from June 3-5.
Many of May’s former allies have now turned against her, with foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt urging her to give up on her efforts to pass her Brexit legislation, The Times reported. Home secretary Sajid Javid also told her that her bid for a second referendum was doomed.
