In three weeks Theresa May will resign as Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party in the UK. The party organisation will call a leadership election. That could, if the full process had to be followed including a postal ballot of members, take a few weeks. When her successor as Leader is elected, she will tender her resignation to the Queen and advise her to appoint the new party leader in her place.
In a ballet of chauffeur driven cars, the new Leader will arrive shortly after May leaves Buckingham Palace. The new Leader will then “kiss hands”, a process in which the Queen invites the new Leader to form an Administration. If that person accepts the invitation, they are then handed the Seals of Office as First Lord of the Treasury and leave for 10 Downing Street to appoint their ministers. This is entirely at their discretion and is usually done by phone. The old Ministers remain in office until their successors collect their Seals of Office. As with most things these are usually taken “as read” and the new guys and gals just get on with their work, starting with a briefing by the most senior Civil Servant in their department. Oh, the “kissing hands” bit, it is a semi-defunct tradition resembling when Bishops kiss the Pope’s ring.
The kissing of hands is, by all account, more of an air kiss, a relic of the days when the sovereign still called many cabinet-making shots.
The above timetable is 99.99% certain. Thursday May has reportedly told the “men in grey suits” (and women) that she will announce her resignation if the fourth vote on her Brexit plan fails to pass the House of Commons.
After the lines in the short note [from the Chairman of the Backbench Tory 1922 Committee to Conservative MP] restate the prime minister's determination to get Brexit done, it confirms in black and white that after the next big vote, in the first week of June, the prime minister will make plans with the party for choosing a successor.
Right now, the expectation is that vote will be lost (although it is not impossible, of course, that Number 10 could turn it round).
And the conversation that's been arranged won't just be a gentle chat about what to do next.
Senior sources have told me that means, even though the letter doesn't spell it out, that if her Brexit plan is defeated again, Mrs May will announce she is going.
In the unlikely event of May’s plan passing the Commons — pigs requesting landing slots at Heathrow is more likely - she will stay until the Brexit Bill passes all its stages in Parliament before resigning.
She will now have more time this Summer to run through fields.