British Prime Minister Theresa May survived a no-confidence vote Wednesday, overcoming an intra-party revolt that threatened her career at the climax of negotiations over the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union.
“A change of leadership in the conservative party now will put our country’s future at risk and create uncertainty when we can least afford it,” May said Wednesday.
May received 200 votes, compared with 117 lawmakers who opposed her in the secret ballot, after she canceled a trip to Ireland for last-minute lobbying in defense of her job. The victory didn’t come without cost, however, as the contest likely means that she won’t lead the party through the next round of national elections.
“She recognizes a lot of people are not comfortable with her leading us into a future general election,” James Cleverly, one of May’s allies in Parliament, told the Guardian and other reporters as the meeting over her fate unfolded.
The results, while a win for May, show the precariousness of her position, by the standards set in the lead-up to the vote as both sides tried to manage expectations.
“If the anti-May vote is at [100 votes], then her vote will be close to or below 200 — which could turn out to be a psychologically comforting number,” the Guardian assessed. “It will be hard to present [130 votes against] as anything other than a very bad result for May, although she will still be the clear winner, and will be able to remain as PM.”
May argued that her ouster would be a Pyrrhic victory for the Brexit hardliners who are frustrated with her negotiations with the European Union.
“The new leader wouldn’t have time to renegotiate a withdrawal agreement and get the legislation through parliament by the 29th of March, so one of their first acts would have to be … delaying, or even stopping, Brexit, when people want us to get on with it,” she argued earlier Wednesday. “And a leadership election would not change the fundamentals of the negotiation or the parliamentary arithmetic.”
