Theresa May - an end

Theresa May announced yesterday, 24th May 2019, that she intends to resign as leader of the Conservative Party on 7th June of this year. She took the post on 11th July 2016, and therefore will be leader of the party for just under three years.

May has been a Conservative MP since 1997 general election, making it through 6 general elections. She became Home Secretary, one of the Great Councillors of State and the 5th highest position in the land (behind Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, First Secretary of State (who also held the position of Foreign Secretary at this time) and Chancellor of the Exchequer). She served in this role from 2010-2016, making her the longest serving Home Secretary in modern times. May served as Home Secretary largely without major criticism, but there was one large scandal over undocumented migrants entering the country.

In Cameron's first term in office, his party saw the loss of votes to UKIP, with UKIP defeating the Tories in the 2014 European Election, resulting in the Conservatives being in third place. UKIP had also done well in the local elections of the same year and two Conservative MPs had defected to the party also, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless. To ensure that Cameron didn't lose votes to UKIP in the 2015 general election and lose his leading, Cameron promised an in-out referendum on the membership of the UK in the European Election. It was this decision that has halted politics for the last three years. May backed remain during this referendum, but was not a vocal leader in the campaign, and was one of the remain MPs to switch sides of the debate to honour the result. When Cameron resigned over the issue, May entered the race to become the new leader of the Conservative Party and therefore Prime Minister.

The battle to replace Cameron was accepted to be a close head-to-head between May and the Brexiteer Boris Johnson. Johnson however withdrew from the race before nominations began after his campaign manager, Michael Gove, announced that he no longer had support in Johnson and decided to run himself. May therefore battled against the leavers, Gove, Leadsom and Fox and against remainer Stephen Crabb. In the vote round of votes from the Conservative MPs, May received more than half of the votes. Liam Fox received the lowest amounts of votes and was eliminated, and realising he did not have enough support, Crabb withdrew. The second vote saw May's vote grow even more and saw Michael Gove be eliminated. May and Leadsom then went to the membership as the top two. Leadsom however withdrew after she made controversial statement over the fact that she was a mother, and May was not, and this was a reason why she would make a better Prime Minister. Following Leadsom's withdrawal, May became leader of the Conservative Party on 11th July. Cameron, who had expected to be Prime Minister until October, left office as Prime Minister two days later after his final Prime Minister's Questions. Theresa May entered Buckingham Palace as soon as Cameron exited, and accepted the Queen's invitation to form a government. The United Kingdom had gained its second female Prime Minister in history, and again it was a Conservative.

As Theresa May became Prime Minister, she needed to form her own cabinet. 5 cabinet members of David Cameron's cabinet were sacked, including high profile ministers, Michael Gove and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osbourne. Theresa May appointed Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond as Chancellor, Amber Rudd as Home Secretary and her political nemesis, Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary. A crucial new role in cabinet was the position of Brexit Secretary, which went to David Davis. Theresa May would go on to have more resignations than Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair who were Prime Ministers for a decade or more. She had 59 resignations, 33 over Brexit, and 12 from the cabinet including two councillors of state.

Theresa May had inherited a small majority of 6 from David Cameron, and therefore in order to ensure she could get her Brexit deal through, she called a snap election. May was well ahead in the polls but ultimately she lost seats, going from 331 to 317. The Labour Party grew from 232 seats to 262. Theresa May still led the largest party, but the slim majority was lost for a minority government. Theresa had to rely on the hard-line Brexit party, the DUP to get through her deal. This decision was where May's period of good light in the media came to and end.

The issue that got rid of her predecessor got rid of her as well: Brexit. Theresa May was stuck in a position of a split party, with the European Research Group led by Jacob Rees-Mogg demanding that she left with no deal if the European Union did not give her a good deal. May's plan on how to leave the European Union saw two cabinet members resign, Boris Johnson and David Davis. The Withdrawal Agreement saw two more go, Ester McVey and Dominac Raab. In December 2018, May saw a vote of no confidence in her leadership of the party, one that she won 200-117 (which was much higher victory than Jeremy Corbyn when he received one in 2016). May went on to try and get her Brexit deal through parliament, with the first attempt resulting in a defeat of 230, which broke the record for the largest government defeat. Following this, Jeremy Corbyn declared a vote of no confidence in the government, the first time since Jim Callagan had been defeated by one in 1979 by one vote. The divided Conservative Party rallied around the government for this vote, as did the DUP, meaning the government survived. Theresa attempted to get through her deal again, being defeated by 149. This was the 4th highest defeat in parliamentary history. A third vote was defeated by a smaller margin of 58 votes, with the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson now backing the deal in order to ensure that Brexit occurred, due to the fact that the defeat of the second meaningful vote resulted in a delay of Brexit from 29th March to 22nd May. The DUP still did not back the government and therefore Brexit was posponed again for 31st October. During this period, Parliament voted to take control of government business, an unprecedented move. A series of indicative votes also made it clear that no deal, a referendum or a deal with a customs union would all not go through Parliament.

Following the third defeat, May began negotiating with Jeremy Corbyn to gain support from his party as her party had not backed her deal. This led to huge outcries and the 1922 backbench committee considering to change the confidence votes to challenge May again. May eventually put forward a revised version of her deal, one that was more in line with a soft Brexit. Andrea Leadsom resigned over it as leader of the House of Commons and Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid met with the Prime Minister to see if they could alter the deal. Theresa May, then resigned from office.

Theresa May tried to do the impossible, she was in my opinion the best person for the job. Her time of office has been overshadowed by Brexit, but she has made significant contributions for equality and has given the NHS record amounts of money. Theresa will remain Prime Minister until the end of July when her replacement is chosen.