May ends in June

Maybe, all along, Theresa May just wanted to outlast Gordon Brown.

Prime Minister Theresa May has resigned her post, announcing she will depart on June 7.

She will stand down as leader of the Conservatives, and by consequence from 10 Downing Street, due to mounting pressure from virtually every corner of her party – members, MPs and cabinet.

On Friday she met with Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 committee. Brady is seen as the shepherd for the parliamentary Conservative party and the arbiter of a leadership contest.

Shortly after she made a statement announcing her resignation.

Until a successor is selected May will remain in post as a flurry of state occasions fill the calendar. Donald Trump’s state visit, a by-election in Peterborough and the 75th anniversary of D-Day both take place in the week before.

The UK’s next prime minister will be selected by the Tories’ 100,000 paid up members. Go democracy, go Brexit.

Boris Johnson is favourite to replace her. A poll of the party’s members found he is the first choice of 39% of the membership.

All the other contenders don’t get out of single figures apart from Dominic Raab, who is the first preference for 13%.

A run-off between Raab and Johnson would see the former foreign secretary smash the former Brexit secretary 59 to 41.

However, BoJo is loathed by a lot of Tory MPs. In order to prevent Johnson from reaching the final two candidates and membership vote, which he would surely walk, they need to play the leadership contest masterfully.

Which, if the last three years are anything to go by…

In Johnson’s favour is the cosmic rise of Nigel Farage’s Brexit party – some of his Tory colleagues will view him as the only person with sufficient charisma to combat him.

As of May 29, Theresa May will have outlasted Gordon Brown’s two years and 319 days as prime minister. Maybe that’s what all this was about from day one?

-joe.ie

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ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson

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An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.

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