Theresa May’s parting shot as Boris Johnson eyes UK leadership
- UK leader Theresa May slams populist politics, Brexit ‘absolutism’ in final speech as PM
- Her successor, either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, will be announced Tuesday
Prime Minister Theresa May criticised the increasing intolerance and absolutism of world politics, in a message many will see as aimed at her successor as Britain’s leader – and at US President Donald Trump.
May, who is due to leave office in a week after a three-year premiership dominated by Brexit, condemned the “politics of division” and said “some are losing the ability to disagree without demeaning the views of others.”
May announced her resignation last month after Parliament rejected her divorce deal with the European Union, which was intended to secure Britain’s orderly departure from the bloc.
It was defeated in part by pro-Brexit members of May’s Conservative Party who condemned its compromises with the EU.
“Today an inability to combine principles with pragmatism and make a compromise when required seems to have driven our whole political discourse down the wrong path,” she told an audience at the Chatham House international affairs think tank.
