By Ben Kerrigan-
Theresa May has agreed to set a timetable for the election of her successor after the next Brexit vote in the first week of June.
It comes after a meeting between the prime minister and senior Tory MPs who are demanding a date for her departure from Downing Street.
The prime minister survived a confidence vote by Conservative MPs at the end of last year , making her role technically safe until next December . Ms May has been under increasing pressure to step down in the face of the political impasse and bad showing for the Conservatives in the recent local elections in England. She has shown a great deal of resilience in facing the huge adversity by her party, despite their own failure to agree a unified position on Brexit.
The prime minister’s Brexit agreement with the EU has now been rejected three times, and will have one more shot in the first week of June.Hopes of it succeeding then are slim, short of a radical turn around most doubt will happen. If May sets a speedy time table for her departure, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson will be among the front runners for the prime ministerial post, but whether he can unfy a party torn apart by months of intense disagreements is yet to be seen.