‘May won’t quit until Brexit is delivered’

Bloomberg

Theresa May will stay on as British prime minister to get Brexit done, even if that means remaining in the job until the end of October, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said.
May promised to step aside once the divorce agreement has been passed in parliament, so a new leader can take charge of the next phase of Brexit talks focussing on the future partnership with the European Union. Many politicians in the ruling Conservative Party want to force her out sooner, but Hammond suggested they’ll be disappointed.
“As far I know she doesn’t have any intention of leaving until that deal is done,” Hammond said in an interview with Bloomberg TV at the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington. “She’s a person with a strong sense of duty, she’s a person who feels she has an obligation to the British people to deliver Brexit, and she will certainly want to make good on that obligation.”
Britain was due to leave the EU on March 29, but has twice had to ask the bloc’s other 27 leaders for an extension. The latest plan, agreed at a summit in Brussels, is for the UK to depart the bloc by October 31.
Back in Westminster, May’s government is holding talks with the opposition Labour Party to see if they can agree a compromise deal that parliament would support.
Hammond said the government is open to discussing a customs union with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as it is one of the party’s key demands. However, he said the government may not back the idea in the end. “We’re prepared to discuss all of these things with them,” he said. “Just because they’ve put it on the table, it doesn’t mean we’re going to accept it or we’re going to do it. But we are prepared to talk about it.”
He also said if voters had wanted economic security, they would have chosen to stay in the EU in the 2016 referendum; instead they made a political and emotional choice to leave.