Theresa May will officially take over the job of British prime minister from David Cameron on Wednesday and form a government as she faces the monumental tasks of uniting a fractured nation and ushering Britain through the process of leaving the European Union.
May, who has been interior minister for six years and is seen by her supporters as a safe pair of hands to steer the country through the disruptive Brexit process, will become Britain’s second woman prime minister, after Margaret Thatcher.
Videos by VICE
“I think around the cabinet table yesterday the feeling was that we have our Angela Merkel,” said Jeremy Hunt, health secretary in Cameron’s team which met for the last time on Tuesday.
“We have an incredibly tough, shrewd, determined and principled person to lead those (Brexit) negotiations for Britain,” Hunt told Sky News television.
German Chancellor Merkel will be May’s most important counterpart on the continent as the Brexit process unfolds. Both women are renowned for their firmness, pragmatism and discipline.
Britain’s decision to leave has rocked the bloc it joined 43 years ago, and thrown decades of European integration into reverse.
Cameron, who led the “Remain” campaign, announced the morning after the June 23 referendum that he would stand down, triggering a leadership contest in the ruling Conservative Party. The contest had been due to last until September but ended unexpectedly on Monday when May’s last rival pulled out.
After taking part in his last weekly session of Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in parliament’s House of Commons, Cameron will make his way to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth. During his final weekly question session in parliament, Cameron urged his successor Theresa May to position Britain as close to the European Union as possible.
“My advice to my successor, who is a brilliant negotiator, is that we should try to be as close to the European Union as we can be for the benefits of trade, cooperation and of security,” he said.
“The channel will not get any wider once we leave the European Union and that is the relationship we should seek. That would be good for the United Kingdom and good for Scotland,” he said in response to a question about Scotland, where most of the electorate voted to stay in the EU in the referendum.
After her own visit to the palace to be formally entrusted with the job by the monarch, May will then enter Number 10 Downing Street as prime minister in the afternoon.
The shocks of the referendum result, Cameron’s resignation, and disarray in the main opposition Labour Party have plunged Britain into its deepest political crisis in modern times.
Apart from the task of executing Brexit, May must try to unite a divided 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.
Before the referendum, May had campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU, albeit in a low-key fashion. Since the vote, she has repeatedly said that “Brexit means Brexit” and her backers say she is determined to make the exit a success.
May has said she plans to set up a new government department to lead the process of quitting the EU which would be headed by someone who had campaigned for Brexit.
Follow VICE News on Twitter: @vicenews
