British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will step down if her Brexit deal is approved by Parliament.
In a meeting with legislators from her Conservative party on Wednesday, May said she would quit if the twice-defeated divorce deal she negotiated with the European Union passes at a third vote.
“We need to get the deal through and deliver Brexit,” May said, according to a statement released by her office. “I am prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended in order to do what is right for our country and our party.”
It is the first time the embattled leader has acknowledged she is prepared to resign in order to secure the votes for her Brexit deal to pass.
“I know there is a desire for a new approach – and new leadership – in the second phase of the Brexit negotiations, and I won’t stand in the way of that,” she said.
May’s announcement came as MPs opened a debate on alternative approaches to Brexit in the House of Commons. Legislators held a series of non-binding votes on Wednesday to try and find majority support for a new Brexit plan.
Britain was due to leave the EU on March 29 but has been granted a delay until April 12, after Parliament overwhelmingly rejected May’s agreement on two occasions. If Parliament votes to approve her deal before April 12, the country will be granted an extension until May 22 to leave the European bloc.
Signs of support
Several MPs who previously voted against the deal have suggested they could now support it, if May produces a timetable for her resignation, allowing a new leader to take over negotiations over Britain’s future relationship with the EU.
Speaking after May’s announcement, Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Brexiteer in the Conservative party, said he would back the prime minister’s deal if the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) that props up the government abstains on the issue.
Rees-Mogg had previously said he would vote for the deal if the DUP also joins him in voting for May’s divorce deal with the EU.
“If the DUP abstained I would feel entitled to back it,” he told reporters. “If the DUP was still against it I would not feel able to back it.”
In support of May, Finance Minister Philip Hammond said she had “demonstrated once again that she puts getting an orderly Brexit done ahead of everything else.”
Reporting from London, Al Jazeera’s Paul Brennan said the prime minister’s pledge appeared to have won over some legislators who had previously rejected her agreement.
“It seems that the sands are shifting,” he said. “There are several Brexiteer Tory MPs who now appear more willing to support the prime minister’s deal than they previously were.”
“That said, there is a hard core of the European Research Group (ERG), these really purist Brexiteers, who are still not budging. There is an estimate of around 30 of those MPs who are standing firm that they won’t vote for the prime minister’s deal under any circumstances.”
The prime minister did not set a date for her departure, but a leadership contest is likely to take place after May 22, her office said in a statement to Conservative Party legislators.
The timetable would be set by the party and May would remain as prime minister until her successor was elected, it said, according to the Reuters news agency.
“This is about providing new leadership for phase 2 (of the negotiations to leave the EU), but we have to get through phase 1 first and leave,” the statement said.
Tom Hamilton, associate director at MHP Communications told Al Jazeera that the shape of Brexit could change significantly under a new prime minister.
“If Tory MPs are prepared to back the deal, I think it tells us a couple of things. It tells us that Tory MPs never had that principled of an objection to the deal in the first place, if they are prepared to back it in return for getting a new prime minister. Secondly, it tells us that they think that a new prime minister might give them what they want compared to what Theresa May might have.”
‘Not about public interest’
Britain’s main opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister’s offer to step down showed her Brexit talks were “about party management, not … the public interest”.
“Theresa May’s pledge to Tory MPs to stand down if they vote for her deal shows once and for all that, her chaotic Brexit negotiations have been about party management, not principles or the public interest,” he said on Twitter.
“A change of government can’t be a Tory stitch-up, the people must decide.”
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the deal was “so bad that the PM has to promise to resign to get it through”, adding that May’s promise would “make an already bad project even worse”.
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