Theresa May, the PM broken by Brexit

Bloomberg

At 10:11 am on May 24, a devastated Theresa May walked back in through the black door of Number 10 Downing Street, tears in her eyes.
For May, 62, it was the end she had dreaded but could no longer avoid. After three years battling the impossible contradictions of Brexit, she was resigning as UK prime minister, defeated at last.
In truth, May’s aides or officials had known a day earlier that there was no hope left, and the prime minister famous for her stubborn resilience would have to resign.
This article charts the final chapter of May’s undoing. Based on conversations with advisers, ministers, officials and others who asked not to be named, it reveals how a cabinet in disarray over Brexit policy
finally came together to oppose the prime minister’s last
desperate plan.
The walls began to close in around the British prime minister almost exactly a week earlier. Last week, news broke that Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn was pulling out of cross-party talks with the government. May had wanted to reach a consensus with Labour on a way forward, after her Brexit divorce deal had been defeated three times in parliament.
Unless she could get her deal past a vote in the Commons, Britain would have to choose between leaving the EU in October without an agreement to cushion the impact on businesses, or cancelling Brexit altogether.
But Corbyn ran out of patience. The negotiations have “gone as far as they can,” he wrote in a letter to May. “The increasing weakness and instability of your government means there cannot be confidence in securing whatever might be agreed between us.” Even May’s allies knew Corbyn had a point.
More than 30 ministers have quit or been fired from May’s administration. Many resigned in protest because they disagreed with her Brexit strategy. May herself faced crisis after crisis, and promised to stand aside in an attempt to persuade her own party to keep her as leader for a little longer.