Queen Elizabeth accepts May’s resignation, Johnson is new British PM

Queen Elizabeth has accepted Prime Minister Theresa May’s resignation, Buckingham Palace said on Wednesday. British lawmakers earlier in the day gave the outgoing PM a standing ovation as they applauded her out of the House of Commons chamber after her final appearance as leader, Reuters reported.

During her last duty in the Commons, she used Prime Minister’s Questions to give a distinctly lukewarm endorsement of Boris Johnson and to suggest Jeremy Corbyn should follow her lead and step down as Labour leader, the Guardian said.

May took over as PM in the aftermath of the 2016 vote to leave the European Union and resigned having failed to deliver Brexit. Her ‘divorce deal’ with the bloc was rejected three times by a divided parliament.

Leaving Downing Street for the final time, she hailed her own record, saying that the immediate priority was “to complete our exit from the EU in a way that works for the whole United Kingdom.”