British Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday appealed directly to voters to back her Brexit plan as she waited to see whether rivals within her party have gained enough support to launch a leadership challenge.
One day after she vowed to stay in office and see through Britain’s exit from the EU, May answered questions from callers on a radio phone-in. It was not an easy ride.
One caller said that May should resign and let a more staunchly pro-Brexit politician take over; another compared her to Neville Chamberlain, the 1930s British prime minister who tried in vain to appease Nazi Germany and avoid a war.
May stood by her plan.
“For a lot of people who voted ‘leave,’ what they wanted to do was make sure that decisions on things like who can come into this country would be taken by us here in the UK and not by Brussels, and that’s exactly what the deal I’ve negotiated delivers,” she said.
Several Conservative lawmakers were pushing for a no-confidence vote, hoping to reach a threshold of 48 to trigger a challenge. If May were to lose her job as party leader, she would also lose her position as prime minister.
Sky News reported that all Conservative whips had been summoned to London, amid rumors that 48 letters had been submitted.
May received one piece of good news when UK Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Michael Gove decided not to follow two other Cabinet members and quit over the deal.
British Secretary of State for Exiting the EU Dominic Raab and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Esther McVey resigned on Thursday, saying that they could not support the agreement.
Like them, Gove was a strong supporter of the “leave” campaign in Britain’s 2016 EU membership referendum.
The political turmoil prompted a big fall in the value of the pound. Yesterday, it recouped some gains, trading 0.4 percent higher at US$1.2821, partly on relief that Gove did not join the others in quitting the government.
EU heads of government, who have called a summit in Brussels on Sunday next week to sign off on the draft agreement, were doing their best to refrain from commenting on the UK’s political chaos.
However, French Minister of Finance and the Economy Bruno Le Maire called some British politicians “liars” who fooled voters into thinking that leaving the EU would be easy and in their interests.
“The truth is that Brexit could end with a nightmare,” he said at a conference in Paris on reforming the global trade system.
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