washingtonpost.com LONDON — The pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May to step aside following a humiliating election result grew Saturday, with her two top aides resigning, a leading newspaper pronouncing her “fatally wounded” and a former minister acknowledging that Tories were plotting possible replacements via the messaging service WhatsApp.
The aides who resigned, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, May’s fiercely loyal co-chiefs of staff, had been widely blamed within the prime minister’s Conservative Party for the lackluster campaign that ended with the Tories losing their majority in Parliament.
Their departures were widely seen Saturday as a Downing Street bid to stave off a far more dramatic resignation: that of the prime minister herself.
But it was unclear whether it would be enough, with some Conservatives acknowledging that May has effectively become a lame-duck leader following a vote that was supposed to give her a resounding mandate for the next five years, but instead morphed into a stinging rejection that could end her premiership within days.
May has insisted she will not step aside, and will instead form a new government that will lead the country through the treacherous currents of the Brexit talks to come.
Several senior members of her Conservative Party have backed her, saying the country can’t afford the chaos of starting to pick a new leader only days before negotiations with European leaders are to kick off.
But other senior Tories have been conspicuous in their silence, and behind the scenes the party has been engaged in fevered debate over whether to push for May’s ouster now or to wait several months until after Britain’s E.U. divorce talks are launched.
If May does move out of 10 Downing Street, it would be the second time in the past year that Britain has been left leaderless after a Tory prime minister gambled and lost in calling a national vote.
May came to office last summer after her predecessor, David Cameron, called a referendum on an exit from the European Union, a move he opposed. The referendum passed, and Cameron resigned the next morning.
The question of whether May will stay on is taking longer to answer — at least in part because no one expected her to lose Thursday, and therefore no one in her party had prepared for the possibility of trying to topple her.
Although May technically has the votes she needs to carry on — assuming she can agree to a deal in which the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland props her up — she will have to step down if enough Tories move against her. (ontinueReading
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