British Prime Minister Theresa May will leave Downing Street once her twice-rejected Brexit withdrawal deal from the European Union has been delivered, according to a Conservative Party lawmaker. She did not give a date for her departure.
May was speaking at Westminster to the 1922 Committee, the influential group of all backbench Conservative Members of Parliament.
"She has said that she will not stay through to the next phase of negotiations. If they (MPs) back the deal she will go," Conservative Party lawmaker Simon Hart said of Prime Minister Theresa May.
"No timescale was talked about or given," Hart told CNN. "The implication was if she gets her deal through, that will kick start the process to find a new leader almost immediately."
He added that the atmosphere was "respectful" and May "was as animated as I'd ever seen her at committee. She was passionate but not emotional. We are all traumatized at this point by these negotiations."
Even if May has secured support from the longstanding opponents to her deal -- including arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg and former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson -- Speaker of the House John Bercow has ruled her deal must be substantively different from the previous two occasions before it can be put forward in the House of Commons for the third time.
Lawmakers reacted to the news on Twitter, including Anna Soubry, who recently left the party to join a breakaway cross-party bloc known as the Independent Group. She tweeted that it was "shameful" that "hard Brexiteers will vote for the PMs 'deal' not because it's good for our country and the right thing to do ... but because it gets rid of the PM."
