Crowned, defined and destroyed by Brexit, UK PM Theresa May resigns
She’s likely to stay in office as prime minister until late July, but Theresa May will formally resign as leader of her Conservative Party on Friday.
Her departure officially fires the starting pistol on a Conservative leadership race that has been brewing for months, if not years. Eleven Conservatives, at today’s count, will tear strips out of each other until they are whittled down to a final two, then the party’s roughly 124,000 members will pick a new prime minister. Two have withdrawn already; expect the rate of attrition to accelerate now. But will a new face and a new name on the door change anything in Westminster or Brussels?
“No, not really,” says the University of Surrey’s go-to Brexit analyst Simon Usherwood. “The underlying fundamentals will remain the same. You will still have a Tory party without a majority by itself, with a DUP [Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party] partner that is utterly inflexible, and an EU that has even less reason to negotiate any provisions.”
Between a no-deal rock and a no-Brexit hard place
DW’s Conflict Zone guest this week was one of the prickliest thorns in May’s side, hard-line Brexiteer Mark Francois. He said the existing Withdrawal Agreement negotiated by May’s team and the EU was “as dead as a dodo,” using typically militaristic language and calling it a “surrender document.”
“Theresa May was always a Remainer; her heart was never in leaving. She always saw it [Brexit] as a kind of damage-limitation exercise,” Francois said.
Read more: Is the Brexit hard-liner European Research Group running the UK?
Francois is second-in-command at the European Research Group (ERG), a growing faction within the Conservative Party; he and many ERG members voted against their party leader’s agreement with Brussels three times in the House of Commons.
To oversimplify, the ERG represented one half of Theresa May’s Brexit headache in parliament — those arguing that she was keeping Britain too close to the EU. The other, larger group of naysayers in Parliament (including a handful of Conservatives, former Conservatives, and the vast majority of opposition MPs) objected to the deal she struck with the EU for precisely the opposite reason.
May tried to frighten each faction into compliance with an “it’s my way or the abyss” ultimatum, the long-serving UK Ambassador to the EU Sir Ivan Rogers told a Parliamentary Select Committee back in February. But she was trying to threaten two directly contradictory abysses, telling Leavers that Brexit was at stake unless they supported her, and telling Remainers that ‘no deal’ would follow unless her deal passed Parliament.
Put side by side, at least one of these threats had to be empty. In the end, both were treated as such.
‘Bunker thinking’ in small circles, without consensus
During almost two hours of testimony in the Commons Rogers went on to strike a series of diplomatically-phrased hammer blows against May and her government’s approach to the Brexit riddle.
Rogers quit his role advising May’s team within months of the Brexit process beginning. Highlights from his testimony included saying that the former interior minister was inexperienced in the integral questions of international and EU trade, predicting that the full Brexit process would be completed “at best, by the early or mid 2020s,” and saying that this initial phase negotiating a Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration was child’s play compared to the comprehensive trade negotiations that lie in store.
The veteran civil servant also noted the EU’s experience in such negotiating processes, while pointing out that Britain had not needed such personnel for decades. Now, Whitehall was racing to find raw recruits, who would have to “learn on the job” against the formidable Brussels machine. This, he conceded, was “not ideal.”
‘Dancing Queen’ no more: May hammered out a deal with the EU, but Parliament was having none of it
But perhaps his most overt criticism of May was to accuse her of suffering from “bunker thinking,” an appraisal echoed by the University of Surrey’s Usherwood.
“Temperamentally, Theresa May is not that kind of consensus-builder. She’s very much somebody who makes decisions in a small group and says ‘this is what I’ve decided and you will now come along with me.’ … She’s never really had many friends,” Usherwood tells DW, saying that May should have kept more people involved in the process.
“It’s possible that somebody could have taken a different route, which is to say ‘let’s try and work this out together and dip everybody’s hands in the blood.’ Then, when it comes to ratifying this, you have no excuse of saying ‘this is their deal,’ because it’s everybody’s deal.”
Read more: UK hopes trade deal with US could soften Brexit blow
On borrowed time since 2017 election debacle
Perhaps the biggest surprise of May’s tenure is that she has managed to hang on this long. The Conservative implosion in the European elections and the rise of the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats nailed the coffin shut. But May’s card had been marked since she called a snap general election in 2017, with the Tories riding high in the polls, only to end up losing the party’s wafer-thin parliamentary majority and compromise her parliamentary position even further. In hindsight, pitting the competent but charmless May against the fiery career campaigner Jeremy Corbyn at a time of severe national upheaval was asking for trouble.
For Usherwood, May survived because the Conservatives wanted someone to complete the first stage of Brexit, and appreciated that whoever did so would forever be tarnished by it.
“I can’t see that this is really going to be a breakthrough moment. The system is where it is. Eventually, the new leader is going to have to say ‘well, actually, when Theresa May said that this was how it was, she wasn’t lying.”
Read more: European elections expose polarized British public
When that day comes, it’s liable to be scant consolation for the future former prime minister, who has had no time or room to maneuver on any major policy issues besides Brexit in her fraught tenure.
Indeed, besides failing to deliver Brexit, she’s liable to be remembered for little more than poor dancing, ill-timed coughing fits, a tearful farewelland her being awkward with light banter — some may recall her inability to remember any “naughty” childhood anecdotes besides running through fields of wheat in Surrey. As she said in that rather stale election-trail TV interview, “the farmers didn’t like that very much.” They’re just one group of British entrepreneurs who might like the next Conservative leader’s plans for October 31 even less.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson is the bookmakers’ favorite to become Britain’s next prime minister. “BoJo” is widely tipped following stints as mayor of London and as foreign secretary in Theresa May’s government. The 54-year-old sparked controversy in 2018 following remarks on women wearing burqas saying that it was “absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.”
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Dominic Raab
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab is likely to be Johnson’s main rival. The son of a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany, Raab is the second favorite to become the UK’s next prime minister. He was widely mocked in 2018 when he said “hadn’t quite understood” how reliant UK trade is on the Dover-Calais crossing.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
David Lidington
An ally of Theresa May, Lidington is seen as a potential successor but his pro-Remain record, having served as Europe minister from 2010 to 2016, may prevent him from ultimately landing the role. Could yet take over on an interim basis as the Tory party seek a permanent leader.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Michael Gove
A leading driver behind the Brexit campaign, Gove may again try to become prime minister after a failed effort to succeed David Cameron in 2016. Gove, who had initially backed Boris Johnson in that contest, withdrew his support and announced his own candidacy.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Jeremy Hunt
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is an outside bet. The 52-year-old, who voted to remain in the European Union, has subsequently changed his stance. Since succeeding Johnson in the role of dealing with foreign affairs, he claimed that Brussels came across as “arrogant” during Brexit negotiations.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Sajid Javid
The son of a Pakistani immigrant bus driver, Sajid Javid is the current UK Home Secretary (interior minister), a role for which he has received mixed reviews. He had a successful banking career with Chase Manhattan and Deutsche Bank before entering parliament in 2010. During the Brexit referendum, Javid was on the Remain side but — like Theresa May — was guarded in his support for the cause.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Esther McVey
Former television presenter Esther McVey declared her intention to stand long before May resigned. The vocal Brexit hardliner resigned as work and pensions secretary in November, protesting at the terms of May’s withdrawal deal. However, in March she voted for the agreement, claiming that it was the only way to ensure Brexit happens. Since then, she has spoken in favor of a no-deal exit.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Rory Stewart
Educated at Eton College — the same school attended by Boris Johnson and David Cameron — Rory Stewart is currently International Development Secretary. A former diplomat who trekked thousands of kilometers across the Middle East and South Asia, he also served as a senior official governing parts of post-invasion Iraq. Stewart is strongly opposed to Britain leaving without a deal.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Matt Hancock
Health Secretary Matt Hancock entered the race to replace the prime minister on the day after her resignation. Although he campaigned for Remain during the referendum, Hancock has said he now believes Britain should leave the EU with a deal. Probably the most tech-savvy of the contenders, Hancock is promoting himself as the candidate best-placed to lead the Tories into the 2020s.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Andrea Leadsom
Andrea Leadsom, who resigned from her Cabinet position in the week of May’s announcement, is also a contender. Leadsom, who came second in a leadership bid in 2016, was heavily criticized at the time for saying that being a mother would give her an advantage as prime minister. This was seen in a poor light as Theresa May had previously spoken of her anguish at not being able to conceive.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Kit Malthouse
Formerly one of Boris Johnson’s deputy London mayors, Kit Malthouse is perhaps best-known for being the author of the so-called Malthouse compromise to replace the Irish backstop provision of Theresa May’s withdrawal deal with “alternative arrangements.” Malthouse has said that although no-deal is not his preferred Brexit option, Britain should be prepared for it.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Mark Harper
Mark Harper was a minister in two separate roles, with responsibility for immigration and disabled welfare benefits. While he had the immigration brief, Harper was forced to resign after his cleaner was found to not be legally permitted to be in the UK. A former chief whip, he is something of an outsider. He’s advocated leaving without a deal but also with an extension beyond October 31.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Sam Gyimah
Former universities minister Sam Gyimah resigned over Theresa May’s withdrawal deal in December 2018, saying it would set the country up for failure. A former investment banker who spent much of his childhood in Ghana, he’s the only one of the 13 candidates declared so far to back a referendum on any Brexit deal.
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Who are the candidates to replace Theresa May?
Steve Baker
Previously the 150/1 long shot with the bookmakers, Steve Baker’s odds have tumbled further after he refused to rule out a leadership bid following messages of support from his constituents.
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/crowned-defined-and-destroyed-by-brexit-uk-pm-theresa-may-resigns/a-49080718?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf