Politics

Theresa May’s Job Is Safe (for Now)

Few people take the prime minister seriously anymore. But the Tories are divided over Brexit, the economy—and who’ll succeed her.

Photographer: Han Yan Xinhua/Eyevine/Redux

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By Robert Hutton

November 16, 2017 at 5:01 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the November 20, 2017 issue of businessweek.

Asked who would be the best prime minister this month, British voters put “not sure” in first place. On this, if on nothing else, the country is in agreement with Conservative lawmakers. The Tories have lost confidence in their leader, Prime Minister Theresa May. The problem is they don’t know who should replace her.

May’s authority has been hanging by a thread since the evening of June 8, when the snap election exit poll revealed she’d squandered an apparently impregnable lead over the opposition Labour Party and lost her parliamentary majority. In November alone, May has seen two cabinet ministers resign over separate scandals and her gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson again stick his foot in his mouth on the subject of a British citizen imprisoned in Iran.