Theresa May, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, will not stand as a candidate in the next election

Theresa May, the former British prime minister whose time in Downing Street was marked by a protracted battle over Brexit, will leave Parliament at the next general election after 27 years as a lawmaker.

With the Conservative Party trailing badly in opinion polls ahead of an election that many analysts expect it to lose, Mrs May is the highest ranking of the party’s 60 or so lawmakers who have so far announced plans to leave Parliament.

Mrs May, Britain’s second female prime minister, said in a statement to her local newspaper that she had “made the difficult decision” to step aside as she no longer felt she could represent the voters in her Maidenhead district in the way they deserved.

The issues she has championed since leaving Downing Street, including tackling modern slavery, were taking up “more and more” of her time, she said.

Mrs May became prime minister in 2016 after her predecessor, David Cameron, resigned when he found himself on the losing side of a referendum in which people in Britain voted 52 percent to 48 percent to leave the European Union.

After that result, which sent shockwaves around the world, it was up to Mrs May – who had opposed Britain’s withdrawal – to negotiate an exit deal with the bloc. In the divisive aftermath of the vote, her Brexit plan failed to gain support in a deeply divided Parliament, and the impasse that followed caused a protracted political crisis.

Although she survived one leadership challenge, she lost the support of Conservative lawmakers and ultimately had little choice but to resign in 2019. She was succeeded by one of her critics, Boris Johnson, who had been an outspoken campaigner for Brexit.

Many admired the seriousness and determination Mrs May showed in her doomed bid to win parliamentary support for her Brexit plan, which aimed to limit the economic damage of the withdrawal and its impact on Northern Ireland.

But by her critics in the wider British public, her leadership style was often seen as bland and her speaking style pompous. When asked in a television interview what was the naughtiest thing she had done as a child, she replied that she had irritated local farmers by running through wheat fields.

In 2016, Mrs May refused for months to explain her views on Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. Instead, she said her policy was that “Brexit means Brexit.”

Her political downfall dated from her decision to call a snap general election in 2017. Instead of increasing her party’s majority in parliament as she expected, she lost it, eroding her authority and forcing her to strike a deal with the small Democratic Unionist Party from the north of the country. Ireland remains in Downing Street.

At her party’s annual conference that year, Mrs May made a big splash set speech became a metaphor for her diminished political fortunes. First she was interrupted by a prankster who theatrically handed her a message saying she had been fired. Then she developed a persistent cough. Finally, part of the slogan “Building a Country That Works for Everyone” fell off on the stage behind her.

The following year things went a little better. Not long before the conference, Mrs May’s dancing style was criticized as wooden when she was filmed on a trip to Africa. She responded by taking the stage for her big speech to the sound of Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’.

Mrs May is one of three female former British Prime Ministers, all of whom have represented the Conservative Party. Margaret Thatcher was the first, serving from 1979 to 1990; and in 2022 Liz Truss became the shortest-lived Prime Minister in British history.

In her statement, Mrs May told the Maidenhead Advertiser newspaper that she remained committed to supporting the current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and that she believed the Conservatives could win the upcoming election.