There was not only emotion but, perhaps appropriately, resignation in British Prime Minister Theresa May’s voice on Friday when she announced she will resign as the Conservative Party leader on June 7 but remain prime minister until a successor is chosen, having failed to deliver on Brexit:
‘I have done everything I can.’
Noting that the queen has been kept “fully informed of my intentions,” May, 62, lamented having failed to persuade Parliament to back the deal she’d negotiated in Brussels for the U.K.’s departure from the European Union.
“I tried three times,” she said from a podium on Downing Street. “I believe it was right to persevere, even when the odds against success seemed high. But it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new prime minister to lead that effort.”
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May’s remarks later grew more emotional, her voice cracking as she expressed gratitude for the opportunity to serve as the second female prime minister in the country’s history — “but,” she said, “certainly not the last.”
She departs, she said, “with no ill will but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.”
Her words moved many on social media, with some Twitter users seconding the remark by former British Prime Minister David Cameron, who made the referendum that put the U.K. on the Brexit path a re-election pledge in 2013, that he feels “desperately sorry for Theresa.”
“God I feel really bloody sorry for Teresa May,” wrote one woman on Twitter. “I’m not sure I like her, but I wouldn’t like to be her.”
“Nothing she did would have been right,” added another. “I kinda feel sorry for her.”
Others, though, such as the Guardian columnist Owen Jones, weren’t buying it:
Watch May’s speech:
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