March 8 (UPI) — Former British Prime Minister Theresa May said Friday that she is quitting politics after almost three decades in parliament.
May, who served as Conservative prime minister from 2016 to 2019, in a statement to the local newspaper in her Maidenhead constituency just outside London said she would not stand in the general election due by the end of the year.
The 67-year-old said she had taken the “difficult” decision to step away from Westminster politics in order to concentrate on issues about which she cared passionately, in particular a modern slavery and trafficking project that she launched in October with the backing of Britain and Bahrain.
“Since stepping down as prime minister I have enjoyed being a backbencher again and having more time to work for my constituents and champion causes close to my heart including most recently launching a Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking,” said May.
“These causes have been taking an increasing amount of my time. Because of this, after much careful thought and consideration, I have realized that, looking ahead, I would no longer be able to do my job as an MP in the way I believe is right and my constituents deserve.”
Her decision to quit brings to 64 the number of Conservative MPs and former Conservatives who will not be contesting their seats in an election Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government is expected to lose heavily to Labor.
May, who worked at the Bank of England before entering politics, was elected MP for Maidenhead in 1997 and promoted to her first shadow ministerial post of Education Secretary within two years, going on to serve in a series of senior shadow cabinet roles as well as becoming the first woman chair of the Conservative Party.
She served as home secretary in former Prime Minister David Cameron’s 2010 to 2016 government, backing his doomed effort to keep Britain in the European Union — which consisted of trying to negotiate a “better membership deal” for Britain and then putting it to a referendum in which he campaigned for remain — eventually succeeding him as prime minister when he resigned over the Brexit result.
She inherited what many believe was a poisoned chalice of trying to negotiate a deal to disentangle Britain from the myriad political, economic, legal, financial and cultural linkages to the EU that had developed over the preceding 44 years since it joined the then-European Economic Community.
Three years of bruising disputes — both with Brussels and internally within a Conservative Party increasingly split between hardline Brexiteers, so-called “Euroskeptics” who wanted a total “no deal” break with Europe, and moderates who wanted to retain a closer political and trade relationship — eroded May’s authority along with her slim parliamentary majority.
A gambit to win the mandate she lacked from the electorate in a snap election in June 2017 backfired with her government losing its majority, forcing her to turn to Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party to cobble together a coalition.
Her premiership never recovered from the botched scheme with rebels forcing a vote of confidence in her leadership in December 2018 over the compromise Brexit withdrawal deal she had negotiated.
She survived the vote, but only a month later parliament rejected her Brexit deal 430-232, the largest government defeat in history, and she quit as prime minister in June 2019, clearing the way for pro-Brexit former London Mayor Boris Johnson to succeed her the following month.
Johnson won a mandate for his “oven-ready” withdrawal deal in an election in December 2019.
Britain officially left the EU on Jan. 31, 2020, with a year’s grace, although wrangling over its implementation — primarily surrounding the land border between British Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, which is part of the EU — rumbles on to this day.
