David Cameron chaired his final cabinet meeting on Tuesday after six years as Britain s prime minister, with incoming premier Theresa May preparing to form a new government to deliver Brexit.
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Theresa May’s first and most pressing task when she enters 10 Downing Street this evening to officially become the UK’s new Prime Minister will be to appoint her Cabinet – and Westminster is already alive with rumours over who is in line for a promotion.
Cameron described May as “strong”, “competent” and “more than able to provide the leadership that our country is going to need in the years ahead”.
Until Monday, Cameron had been expected to remain in office for another two months, while the two Conservative candidates vying to replace him campaigned for the votes of the party’s 150,000-strong membership.
As she fills the major roles in her government, Ms May will have to keep Brexit-supporting heavyweights onside if she is to heal the splits in the party caused by the referendum.
“A nine-week leadership campaign is highly undesirable”.
‘Honoured and humbled”: Theresa May is now Tory leaderMrs May moved to reassure Eurosceptic Tories that “Brexit means Brexit’ and that she will pull the country out of the European Union despite being a Remain supporter during the European Union referendum campaign.
On July 11 May said that Britain would not rejoin the European Union by the back door.
Mr Cameron told the Telegraph: “I came into Downing Street to confront our problems as a country and lead people through hard decisions so that together we could reach better times”.
At lunchtime, shortly after a key campaign speech by the Home Secretary, her only rival in the Tory leadership race, Andrea Leadsom, withdrew.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is to resign Thursday, paving the way for Home Secretary Theresa May to take the reins. May will become the UK’s second female Prime Minister after Margaret Thatcher. She has pledged to negotiate a deal to leave the European Union that reasserted Britain’s ability to control immigration, a central issue in the referendum on June 23 on whether to leave the bloc.
Mr Cameron later made his last visit as PM, to a free school in west London, and also toured Number 10 to thank staff as he made preparations to leave, with removals vans delivering his packing boxes.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party, now headed by Jeremy Corbyn, is facing a leadership challenge today.
Several hundred thousand party members are eligible to vote in the leadership race.
The bitter battle risks splitting the century-old Labour Party in two, and has led to allegations of abuse and violence.
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May is now selecting members for her cabinet, a process that Whitman said normally takes three days.
