Uncertainty remains as UK awaits a new leader

After a series of failures to negotiate a Brexit deal in parliament, Theresa May resigned as British prime minister on June 7, triggering a contest for the Conservative Party's leadership.

Boris Johnson, former British foreign secretary and a Brexit hardliner, has established a strong lead for the Tory leadership. In the initial rounds of voting by Conservative Party members, he won 114 votes. And in the final round on June 20, Johnson won 160 votes while his nearest rival Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary in the May government, got 77 votes. The two will now contest for the British prime minister's post, which will be decided in late July.

Johnson, an advocate of hard Brexit, was accused of misleading the public before the Brexit referendum in 2016. So how did he gain such a lead in the Tory leadership contest? First, according to the Brexit referendum result, Britons are divided almost equally between leaving and remaining in the European Union, which in turn shows British society has not reached a consensus on the withdrawal path and conditions. Second, after negotiations with the EU for almost three years, May failed to persuade Tory members and convince the Labour Party to accept her Brexit deal, especially because she refused to change her policy even after three successive deals were voted down by parliament.