{"id":17786,"date":"2018-09-16T16:38:27","date_gmt":"2018-09-16T16:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dinnews.in\/?p=17786"},"modified":"2018-09-16T16:38:27","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T16:38:27","slug":"british-pm-irritated-by-leadership-speculation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/?p=17786","title":{"rendered":"British PM &#8216;irritated&#8217; by leadership speculation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify; background: white; margin: 0in -.2in 10.2pt -.2in;\"><span style=\"font-size: 8.0pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; color: #383636; background: white;\">British Prime Minister Theresa May said Sunday she was &#8220;irritated&#8221; by speculation about a leadership contest as she slammed former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, seen as her most likely challenger.<\/span>The centre-right Conservative Party&#8217;s leader said she was focused on securing a Brexit deal rather than her own future, in a BBC television interview marking the six-month countdown to Britain&#8217;s departure from the European Union.May blasted Johnson for using &#8220;completely inappropriate&#8221; language when he described her Brexit blueprint as putting Britain in a &#8220;suicide vest&#8221;.Asked about her plans to stay in the job, she said: &#8220;I get a little bit irritated but this debate is not about my future &#8212; this debate is about the future of the people of the UK and the future of the United Kingdom.&#8221;That&#8217;s what I&#8217;m focused on and that&#8217;s what we should all be focused on.&#8221;\u00a0The leader added it was important to ensure &#8220;we get that good deal from the European Union which is good for people in the UK, wherever they live in the UK&#8221;.Johnson, who quit the Cabinet over May&#8217;s proposals to keep Britain close to the EU on trade, is the bookmakers&#8217; favourite to succeed May, ahead of interior minister Sajid Javid, eurosceptic backbench leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, environment minister Michael Gove and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.May&#8217;s Conservative minority government contains a sizeable bloc of hardcore Brexiteers headed by Rees-Mogg and would likely need the support of the left-wing main opposition Labour Party, or a chunk of their MPs, to get her Brexit proposals through parliament.Keir Starmer, Labour&#8217;s Brexit spokesman, said any EU deal must meet Labour&#8217;s key Brexit tests, which include delivering the &#8220;exact same benefits&#8221; as Britain currently has inside the single market and customs union, to win their support.In a letter published by The Sunday Times, he said they also could not back a loosely worded agreement: &#8220;A vague political declaration would not meet those tests. Labour will not &#8212; and cannot &#8212; vote for a blind Brexit.&#8221;\u00a0Meanwhile London Mayor Sadiq Khan added his weight to calls for a second Brexit referendum on the outcome of Britain&#8217;s EU departure negotiations.Writing in The Observer newspaper, he said Britain faces either a bad Brexit deal or no deal.&#8221;They are both incredibly risky and I don&#8217;t believe Theresa May has the mandate to gamble so flagrantly with the British economy and people&#8217;s livelihoods,&#8221; he wrote.The Labour politician said voters need to be given a new referendum.&#8221;This means a public vote on any Brexit deal obtained by the government, or a vote on a no-deal Brexit if one is not secured, alongside the option of staying in the EU,&#8221; he wrote.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British Prime Minister Theresa May said Sunday she was &#8220;irritated&#8221; by speculation about a leadership contest as she slammed former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, seen as her most likely challenger.The centre-right Conservative Party&#8217;s leader said she was focused on securing a Brexit deal rather than her own future, in a BBC television interview marking the six-month countdown to Britain&#8217;s departure from the European Union.May blasted Johnson for using &#8220;completely inappropriate&#8221; language when he described her Brexit blueprint as putting Britain in a &#8220;suicide vest&#8221;.Asked about her plans to stay in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17786"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17791,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17786\/revisions\/17791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}