She also stood firm on her promise that Brexit means Brexit.
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“I know because we’re Great Britain that we will rise to the challenge”. In the June 23rd referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union, 52% of voters expressed a desire to leave, having been given precious few details of what exactly that entailed or how it might be achieved.
After Cameron resigned as prime minister following the Remain camp’s defeat in the European Union referendum, Johnson had been tipped as a favourite to replace him at 10 Downing Street.
The 59-year-old will be Britain’s second female prime minister, following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher, her fellow Conservative with whom she has inevitably been compared.
Cameron said he wanted to use the prime minister’s question time session to end a rumor that he was not fond of the cat, which was brought to Downing Street from an animal shelter five years ago.
An official photograph showed May curtseying to a smiling Queen Elizabeth, for whom she is the 13th prime minister in a line that started with Winston Churchill.
But her first choices for her close team sparked surprise, including former London mayor Johnson as Britain’s top diplomat and longtime eurosceptic David Davis in charge of the “exiting the European Union” portfolio.
Many of those people, fed up with remote politicians and bureaucrats, voted to leave the EU.
If May can persuade some of those who backed Brexit as a protest vote that her government is more in touch than that of her gilded predecessor, she could take some pressure off the European Union negotiations.
Instead, he will be in place to welcome Cameron’s successor, Theresa May, and her husband Philip- while trying to keep the famous residence and offices vermin-free.
May’s reshuffle marks a clean break from the liberalism of the Cameron years and her chancellor, Philip Hammond, made clear yesterday that there is a new economic policy. “It’s not been an easy journey, and of course we have not got every decision right, but I do believe that today our country is much stronger”.
May is seen by her supporters as a safe pair of hands to steer the country through the disruptive Brexit process. “I will miss the barbs of the opposition”, Cameron said.
A tough-talking interior minister for the past six years, May is something of an unknown quantity internationally, although she has received ringing endorsements from party colleagues and a normally sceptical British tabloid press.
“When we pass new laws, we’ll listen not to the mighty, but to you”.
The new leader stressed she would fight against social injustice and that she believes in the unity of all aspects of the United Kingdom.
Britain’s new Prime Minister Theresa May speaks outside 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016.
Investors will be watching her first days in office closely but with greater optimism as the value of the pound, which fell by up to 15 percent against the dollar after the Brexit vote, rallied in recent days.
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“The UK finally has a new prime minister”, Gianni Pittella, the leader of the centre-left group in the European Parliament said in a statement as Theresa May took over the government.
