Tory leader Theresa May’s days have been numbered for months, her nearly three years as UK prime minister a colossal failure by any standard.
She’s been ridiculed and reviled as “mean…crude…stupid (and) the prime minister of humiliation.”
Since majority Brits voted for Brexit on June 23, 2016, she lied expressing support, while privately working against Britain leaving the EU.
Despite losing multiple parliamentary votes on her no-Brexit/Brexit deal from January to April this year, she hung on, delaying her departure until announcing it on Friday, saying she’ll end her turbulent premiership on June 7.
The end of the line drew near after announcing another version of her no-Brexit/Brexit deal on Tuesday. It fell flat for amounting to old wine in new bottles, parliamentarians overwhelmingly against it without a vote taken.
Tory House of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom resigned on Wednesday, refusing to present May’s last-gasp deal for a floor vote.
Four more Tory ministers resigned. On Wednesday, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith suggested her husband, known as her “rock,” advise her to step aside and end what’s going on, adding:
“(T)he reality is that she has no confidence any longer, not just in her party but in the cabinet as well. So the best thing for her and the best thing for everybody else is to break away and say it’s time to find a new leader, somebody who campaigned for Brexit, who is committed to Brexit in any form.”
Greatly understating how widely she’s reviled by Tories and opposition MPs, the BBC said she’s “unlikely to join Margaret Thatcher in the annals of leaders who left an indelible mark on their country.”
A London Guardian readers section headlined: “Good riddance,” saying as well: “Don’t let her failure to deliver Brexit overshadow her many other failures.”
Following her resignation, Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn called for a general election, saying:
“She has now accepted what the country has known for months: she cannot govern, and nor can her divided and disintegrating party,” adding:
“The Conservative Party has utterly failed the country over Brexit and is unable to improve people’s lives or deal with their most pressing needs.”
“Parliament is deadlocked and the Conservatives offer no solutions to the other major challenges facing our country.”
“Whoever becomes the new Conservative leader must let the people decide our country’s future through an immediate general election.”
As of now, a Tory leadership contest is scheduled for June 10 to choose her successor. She’ll stay on until a selection is made.
Vowing for nearly three years to deliver Brexit, she covertly worked to undermine what majority Brits voted for.
Her scheme to leave Britain half in and half out of the EU angered most parliamentarians, along with Brussels and most Brits.
Months earlier, her days looked numbered, UK media reporting that virtually all her cabinet members urged her to step down voluntarily.
She angered fellow Tories and opposition MPs alike, blaming them for her ineptness and arrogance over the Brexit impasse.
Former MP George Galloway slammed her, saying her Brexit scheme “surely cooks the goose of the plan but also bastes her ready for roasting,” adding:
“In any normal polity the leader at least would already be gone…(It’s) obvious (that Tories) must get rid of” her.
An unnamed EU official said
“there is a complete lack of confidence (by Brussels in May) to deliver on this deal.”
She colluded with US hardliners against Russia, falsely calling the Kremlin a threat to UK security, a diversionary tactic, shifting attention from her disastrous no-Brexit/Brexit deal, overwhelmingly opposed by parliamentarians, including fellow Tories.
In response to her hostile anti-Russia rhetoric and actions, Moscow’s London embassy said she “can only bring all sorts of negative consequences for the UK and the state of Russian-British bilateral relations.”
In the US and UK, they’re ruptured beyond repair, Cold War 2.0 raging more intensely than during the Soviet Russia era, risking East/West confrontation. The ominous possibility of nuclear war is real.
May’s tenure will be defined by Brexit deception and failure, breaching the public trust, and militant hostility toward Russia based on Big Lies — a nation threatening no one.
She got Brussels to extend the March 29 Brexit deadline twice, October 31 the latest deadline, perhaps to be extended again if major differences aren’t resolved.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said
“(w)e are closely monitoring (events in Britain) because the European Union is our main trading and economic partner. For this reason we are naturally interested in a predictable, stable and developing partner,” adding:
“Regrettably, I cannot recall offhand any landmarks that might somehow illustrate a contribution to the development of bilateral relations between Russia and Britain. It is rather the other way round. May’s premiership was a very complicated period in our bilateral relations.”
Russian upper house Federation Council International Affairs Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachyov slammed her, saying
“(t)he further march of events in bilateral relations will depend on who will take the vacant seat of the prime minister,” adding:
“Rumors vary but by and large they inspire little optimism, if at all. The outgoing prime minister will be remembered mostly for her scandalous ‘highly likely’ style rhetoric – in other words, groundless charges against Russia which a number of European countries interpreted as a reason enough to expel Russian diplomats.”
May is an example of leadership “not bother(ing) to present solid proof when it comes to Russia. So I believe nobody in Russia will be too much aggrieved over (her) resignation.”
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.