May Bows to the Inevitable, Broken by Brexit: Balance of Power

(Bloomberg) --

It's been coming for months, but time has finally run out for U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May.

In a tearful statement this morning, May announced she would step down as Conservative Party leader on June 7, after U.S. President Donald Trump visits, remaining as a caretaker premier through the contest to replace her. That could take up to six weeks.

It’s a bitter end for the vicar’s daughter who spent the past three years trying to find a way through on the departure from the European Union. She was hemmed in by hardline Brexiteers and “remainers” on either side, but also built a reputation for making decisions via a tightly-knit group with an air of secrecy, and for changing course on the fly.

May did not vote for Brexit. But she saw it as her civic duty to get it through. Now that task will pass to someone else, potentially a true believer in the EU divorce. The early front-runner is former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, though Tory contests are notoriously difficult to predict.

Either way, everything from a no-deal Brexit to no Brexit at all remains very much on the table, amid questions on whether Brussels will have any patience past the October deadline to sort it out. With an unruly and polarized parliament (and party) at home, whoever comes after May could soon have a fresh appreciation for how hard the job is.

Global Headlines

Putin’s plan | A year into his $400 billion program to transform Russian living standards by the end of his current presidency in 2024, Vladimir Putin’s ambitions are getting a reality check. The National Projects set detailed targets on everything from healthcare and infrastructure to technology and ecology. Putin is pledging a “decisive breakthrough,” though Kremlin officials say privately they don’t expect anything of the sort soon, Natasha Doff and Evgenia Pismennaya report.

Nationalists fall short | The euroskeptic forces targeting this week's European Parliament elections failed to make a breakthrough yesterday in the Netherlands, the first country to release exit polls. Populist groups are set to claim four seats, the same as last time, while pro-EU Labor is projected to beat Prime Minister Mark Rutte's party. Voters in most of the EU's 28 members vote Sunday in a ballot that's a contest for nationalist groups trying to change how the bloc works.

Electoral heat | She’s ``crazy.’’ He’s in need of a family ``intervention.’’ The verbal volleys between Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday may not embody high political ideals, but they have a deadly serious electoral purpose. While declaring the administration may have committed ``impeachable offenses,’’ Pelosi is resisting calls from fellow Democrats to open proceedings, arguing they would be giving Trump what he wants to fire up his base for re-election in 2020.

Counter attack | Trump gave Attorney-General William Barr “full and complete authority” to declassify information related to his inquiry into investigations of the 2016 presidential election. He also directed U.S. intelligence agencies to cooperate as Barr looks into allegations by Trump and his allies that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe was prompted by spying on his campaign, and that figures in the Justice Department and the FBI were trying to undermine him.

Enemy of my enemy | When Trump was running for office, he railed against foreign entanglements and what he called America’s “endless wars.” As president, he has inserted the U.S. into the confrontation that’s shaping the Middle East, as Benjamin Harvey reports: On one side is Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and, surprisingly, Israel; on the other, Iran and its allies Syria, Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

What to Watch:

• The Trump administration is proposing new tariffs on goods from countries found to have undervalued currencies, a move that would escalate its assault on global trading rules.
• Alberta's new United Conservative Party government introduced a bill to repeal the oil-rich province's carbon tax, setting up a legal showdown with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over a cornerstone of his environmental policy.

And finally... The U.S.-China trade war has ignited an online fight between anchors of what many consider their propaganda machines: Fox News and Chinese state television. China Global Television Network's Liu Xin accused Fox Business Network's Trish Regan of acting like a Trump spokesman. Regan said Beijing was waging an information war.

--With assistance from Ben Sills and Stuart Biggs.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Winfrey at mwinfrey@bloomberg.net, Anthony Halpin

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