British Prime Minister Theresa May has announced she will quit, triggering a contest that will bring a new leader to power who is likely to push for a more decisive Brexit divorce deal.

Ms May set out a timetable for her departure – she will resign as Conservative Party leader on 7 June with a leadership contest beginning the following week. 

“I will resign as leader of the Conservative and Unionist party on Friday, seventh of June so that a successor can be chosen,” Ms May said on Friday outside 10 Downing St. 

With her voice breaking up with emotion, Ms May, who endured crises and humiliation in her effort to find a compromise Brexit deal that parliament could ratify, said she bore no ill will.

“I will shortly leave the job that has been the honour of my life to hold,” Ms May said. “The second female prime minister, but certainly not the last.

“I do so with no ill will but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.”

Ms May, once a reluctant supporter of European Union membership, who won the top job in the turmoil that followed the 2016 Brexit vote, steps down with her central pledges – to lead the United Kingdom out of the bloc and heal its divisions – unfulfilled.

Ms May bequeaths a deeply divided country and a political elite that is deadlocked over how, when or whether to leave the EU.

She said her successor would need to find a consensus in parliament on Brexit.

Ms May’s departure will deepen the Brexit crisis as a new leader is likely to want a more decisive split, raising the chances of a confrontation with the EU and a snap parliamentary election.

The leading contenders to succeed Ms May all want a tougher divorce deal, although the EU has said it will not renegotiate the Withdrawal Treaty it sealed in November.

Sterling reversed initial gains it made on Ms May’s resignation.

‘One last roll of the dice’ 

Ms May’s latest effort to force through her despised Brexit deal, which included giving MPs the option of holding a referendum on the agreement, proved her final undoing.

The move prompted a furious reaction from Conservatives – including cabinet members.

“I thought she deserved one last roll of the dice. But she took those dice and threw them off the table,” a senior minister told The Times.

The clamour for her to stand down reached fever pitch after Andrea Leadsom – one of the cabinet’s strongest Brexit backers – resigned on Wednesday from her post as the government’s representative in parliament.

She became the 36th minister to quit Ms May’s dismally dysfunctional government – a modern record.

In her resignation letter Ms Leadsom told the prime minister she no longer believed her approach to Brexit would deliver on the 2016 referendum result to leave the EU.

Several senior cabinet ministers reportedly then held “frank” talks with Ms May on Thursday.

No deal?

Ms May’s departure will kickstart a Conservative Party leadership contest – already unofficially underway – that is expected to encompass more than a dozen candidates and favour a Brexiteer.

That could lead to Britain, which has already twice delayed its departure from the European Union, opting to leave the bloc without a deal on 31 October, the extended deadline agreed with Brussels last month.

Tory MPs will hold a series of votes to whittle the contenders down to a final two that will be put to the party’s more than 100,000 members.

Former foreign secretary and gaffe-prone Brexit cheerleader Boris Johnson is the membership’s favourite, but a considerable number of Conservative MPs are thought to hold serious reservations about his suitability for the top job.

He has repeatedly said Britain should not fear a so-called no-deal Brexit.

‘No legacy’ 

Ms May was the surprising winner in a 2016 leadership contest to replace predecessor David Cameron after he resigned in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum 

Despite having campaigned to stay in the EU, she embraced the cause with the mantra “Brexit means Brexit”.

However, the decision to hold a disastrous snap election in June 2017, when she lost her parliamentary majority, left her stymied.

Ms May will leave office without any significant achievements to her name – other than the bungled handling of Brexit, according to political analysts.

“She doesn’t really have a legacy that she can call her own other than just having to manage what is a very difficult issue,” said Simon Usherwood, from the University of Surrey’s politics department.

“I think anybody in her position would have had great difficulty.”

Others were more brutal in their assessment.

“It was only an impossible job because she made it one,” said Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London.