Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you. It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister. And I’ve agreed with Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of our backbench MPs, that the process of choosing that new leader should begin now and the timetable will be announced next week. I’ve today appointed a Cabinet to serve, as I will, until a new leader is in place.
So I want to say to the millions of people who voted for us in 2019, many of them voting conservative for the first time. Thank you for that incredible mandate. The biggest conservative majority since 1987, the biggest share of the vote since 1979. And the reason I have fought so hard in the last few days to continue to deliver that mandate in person was not just because I wanted to do so, but because I felt it was my job, my duty, my obligation to you to continue to do what we promised in 2019.
‘I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world.
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