The balancing act for Britain’s second elected female leader will be to bring the hard right wing of her party and the small “c” conservatives together.
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The victor of the contest, which had been whittled down from an initial five contenders to May and Leadsom, was to have been chosen by some 150 000 Tory party members, and announced on September 9.
He will be then driven up to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II after which May will have her own audience at the palace when she will accept the monarch’s offer to form a new government. Then in 2002, she became chairman of the Conservative Party.
The German leaders spoke after May’s ally Chris Grayling appeared to dampen any hopes among Britain’s European Union partners that her rapid ascent might accelerate the process of moving ahead with the split and resolving the uncertainty hanging over the 28-nation bloc.
“Business needs certainty”, she continued.
But one huge issue that May did not touch on during the referendum campaign was immigration. When announcing her candidacy two weeks ago, she told her listeners “I don’t tour the television studios”.
Left-winger Corbyn has a strong base of support among grassroots Labour members and some trade union leaders. May had a commanding level of support in the parliamentary party, winning nominations from 199 MPs to Leadsom’s 84.
Despite May’s brisk pledge that “Brexit means Brexit”, the lack of a fixed timetable for invoking Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon – the triggering mechanism for a negotiated split – leaves plenty of room for uncertainty.
Leadsom was virtually unknown nationally until she entered the contest. But Johnson was forced into a humiliating pullout, after Gove announced his own candidacy while taking numerous former mayor’s backers with him.
The members of the House of Commons rose as one to thank a smiling Cameron for his six years of service as a Conservative prime minister. However, May was always the choice of the ruling elite – with the Tory-supporting media, including the Times and Sun newspapers of billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch, backing her, as well as the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.
She is expected to immediately start putting together a new cabinet, a complex political balancing act in which she will try and satisfy opposing camps in her party, which was bitterly split over the European Union issue. “The campaign was fought”.
Mrs May will follow him to the Palace to be formally appointed his successor by “kissing hands” with the head of state, and is expected to make her first speech as PM outside the famous black door to Number 10, outlining her priorities for the new administration.
Ministers – including May – gathered for Cameron’s 215th and final weekly Cabinet session Tuesday, the day after she was confirmed as the new Conservative Party leader and the next prime minister.
Meanwhile, Jean-Claude Juncker’s spokesman insisted the European Commission chief “can cope” with negotiations with May, who on Sunday warned he was about to find out how “difficult” she can be.
Traditionally in British politics, it was anticipated that Prime Ministers would occupy two of the three large governmental positions before becoming Prime Minister, those positions being Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The shoes of Britain’s Home Secretary Theresa May as she walks past Larry the Downing Street cat as she arrives to attend a cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street, in London, Tuesday, July 12, 2016.
This is not simply a reference to May being a woman.
May has served for years as the Home Secretary, a post with responsibility for policing and anti-terrorism legislation.
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Apart from the task of leading Brexit, May must try to unite a fractured party and a nation in which many, on the evidence of the referendum, feel angry with the political elite and left behind by the forces of globalization and economic change.
