LONDON – The high drama over who will be Britain’s next prime minister intensified Tuesday with the former London mayor delivering some potential payback: endorsing the rival of the fellow anti-EU leader who drove him from the race.
The move by the ex-mayor Boris Johnson – who was once the presumed front-runner to succeed David Cameron – came less than a week after he was politically ambushed by Justice Minister Michael Gove, a one-time ally in the campaign to pull Britain from the European Union.
Now, Johnson hopes to play spoiler with his endorsement of Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom, who joined Gove and Home Secretary Theresa May as the three remaining candidates following internal voting within Cameron’s Conservative party.
The party will eventually pick the new prime minister, who will be handed the task of setting in motion talks for Britain to break with its 27 other EU partners.
Gove – who was meant to serve as Johnson’s leadership campaign manager – preemptively announced his own candidacy and declared Johnson unfit to be leader.
Johnson’s endorsement of Leadsom, a former treasury secretary and lawmaker who announced her candidacy Monday, appeared to return the favor.
“Andrea Leadsom offers the zap, the drive, and the determination essential for the next leader of this country,” Johnson said in a statement.
“Above all, she possesses the qualities to bring together the leavers and the remainers,” Johnson said of the two camps within the Conservative Party, which was split over whether or not to leave the bloc.
Now, nearly all the leaders of the movement to withdraw from the European Union have also either stepped back or have been sidelined in the post-referendum political wars and deep soul-searching across Britain by voters wondering if they did the right thing.
“Rats fleeing a sinking ship,” said Belgian politician Guy Verhofstadt.
On Monday, right-wing firebrand and populist politician Nigel Farage resigned as leader of his U.K. Independence Party. He also spearheaded the movement to exit the European Union, an effort known as “Brexit.”
“I have never wanted to be a career politician. That is why I now feel that I’ve done my bit,” Farage, a virulent opponent of immigration, said in a news conference.
“I understand that not everybody in this country is happy,” he said. But “I want my life back, and it begins now.”
The decision by British voters to leave the bloc, built through a series of treaties in the wake of World War II, shocked nations around the globe and plunged Britain into political and economic uncertainty.
Since the June 23 vote, the British pound has fallen about 10 percent against the U.S. dollar, and economists have warned that Britain’s exit could tip the scales toward a global recession.
“Business needs certainty,” Leadsom, who also campaigned for Britain to leave the EU, said in a speech on Monday. “I will prioritize new trade deals with the fastest-growing parts of the world.”
“The United Kingdom will leave the European Union,” she added. “Freedom of movement will end.”
But her rival May has since risen as the party favorite, with support from about 100 lawmakers, according to the ConservativeHome website, which has close ties to the Conservative Party.
May actually campaigned for Britain to remain in the European Union, but she has presented herself as a unifying figure within the party – and has also promised to reform the bloc’s rules of freedom of movement across borders. She has stopped short, however, of promising a full halt to migration to Britain.
Much of the “leave” campaign, popularly known as Brexit, focused on calls for stricter border controls and full withdrawal of Britain from Europe’s common market.
Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, told the Financial Times on Monday that he planned to cut the country’s corporate tax rate to just 15 percent – the lowest of any major economy.
Amid the uncertainty, EU leaders offered mixed messages – some mocking Britain’s political disarray and others holding out hope that the EU splintering could somehow be avoided.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called the “the Brexit heroes of yesterday are the sad Brexit heroes of today.”
Speaking to EU lawmakers, Juncker said that “Leave” campaign leaders Johnson and Farage were “not patriots.”
“Patriots don’t resign when things get difficult, they stay,” he said.
But Austria’s finance minister, Hans Joerg Schelling, said the economic upheavals since the referendum could convince British leaders to disregard the referendum results and remain in the EU fold.
“The reaction by companies and the financial market is a salutary shock for the country,” he was quoted by the German daily Handelsblatt.
