Conservative leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom has announced she is pulling out of the race to replace David Cameron as prime minister. The energy minister has paved the way for Home Secretary Theresa May, as the only remaining candidate, to become Tory leader and Prime Minister - and she is expected to make a statement at 5pm today.  Mrs Leadsom said: "The best interests of our country inspired me to stand for the leadership. I believe that in leaving the EU a bright future awaits, where all our people can share in a new prosperity, freedom and democracy...  Theresa May learned that she was to become Prime Minister in a side room in an unprepossessing venue a stone’s throw from the International Conference Centre in central Birmingham. Normally the nearest the “IET Events and Weddings venue” gets to political history is when it hosts fringe meetings organised by right wing thinktanks when the Conservative party conference is being held at the nearby ICC. The Home Secretary had just given a 20 minute speech to launch what she thought would be the beginning of a nine week Conservative leadership campaign in which she had made a bold claim to orientate her premiership around the needs and interests of blue collar Tories.

In Theresa May, the British home secretary who is set to become the next prime minister of the UK on Wednesday (13 July), the EU will get a pragmatic, meticulous and tough negotiator, who is unlikely to rush into Brexit talks. The 59-year-old is likely to use the summer to hammer out a negotiating position for Britain to leave the EU.  May, who was a quiet supporter of the Remain camp, ruled out a second referendum in her leadership campaign and vowed to honour the British voters' choice of leaving the EU. “Brexit means Brexit and we’re going to make a success of it,” she said when she launched her leadership bid for the Conservative Party.  “There will be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to rejoin it by the back door, and no second referendum.” May is unlikely to bow to pressure from EU leaders to start negotiations by triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty any time soon. Until the procedure is officially launched, the UK remains in control of timing and can still be at the table of the EU as a full member. She might use the time to feel out what other leaders are ready to give to the UK, and build alliances among the remaining 27 members. The EU 27 will meet in September without the UK to discuss the EU's future, and May will be ushered into her first EU summit in late October.

EU leaders are likely to want to hear how she envisages the British exit and future relationships with the block.  May needs to navigate between more pragmatic states like Germany, Sweden, Ireland and the Netherlands that would want to maintain strong trading ties with the UK, and others like Belgium and France that are likely to want to make an example out of Britain. Central and Eastern European states could be sympathetic to May, as they share the UK's view of the EU as a loose cooperation, not a federal state, but rights and benefits of their citizens living and working in the UK could mean trouble for the talks.  France's presidential election in May, and Germany's general election next autumn could complicate matters, as their leaders are likely to be grounded by election campaigns and would be less flexible in the negotiations.   May might want to delay launching Article 50 further into next year, not to have Brexit negotiations held hostage by the various campaigns.  British media reported that May could appoint Liam Fox, a previous contender for the Tory leadership, or David Davis, another senior Tory MP, both Brexiteers as lead negotiatiors for the talks with the EU.

Davis suggested in a blog post that triggering Article 50 should happen before or by the beginning of next year.

The IMF said the UK's looming exit from the EU would hurt eurozone trade as the referendum result was "likely to lead to persistent uncertainty" regarding its future relationship with the bloc.  "A slowdown in global growth could also undermine the recovery and raise the likelihood of stagnation," the IMF said in its latest evaluation of the eurozone. Financial markets and business confidence would also be hit, while slower growth would also mean inflation was likely to be weaker in the short to medium term.  The IMF said rising euro scepticism had created "stark political divisions" in the bloc, hindering any "collective will to take crucial decisions for a stronger union", such as dealing with the refugee crisis.

It came as ratings agency Moody's warned that the rise of populism could "threaten the existence" of the eurozone and the wider EU, if anti-establishment movements gained traction ahead of elections in Germany and France next year. "In the long run, the potential strengthening of these movements could have detrimental implications for the continued cohesiveness of the EU and the euro area," it said. "The fragmentation of the EU could also encourage protectionist tendencies in a number of countries, and therefore seriously challenge, and ultimately reverse, the past few decades of increased globalisation... thwart the long-term growth prospects of individual economies and slow the catch-up of less developed countries." Moody's downgraded its UK growth forecast to 1.5pc this year and 1.2pc in 2017, from previous forecasts of 1.8pc and 2.1pc.

Growth across the eurozone would also be weaker, it said, though the impact of the Brexit vote on the US economy was expected to be limited.

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The argument between the two heads of the dragon called the EU is the main hurdle to the transformations and reforms that the ones who have been hit by the wave of the Brexit vote. Aside from some cosmetic measures, if they even do get taken, most likely the EU will forget the need to bring up again a constitutional project that would end the institutional aberrations, the massive democratic shortcomings, the huge waste of funds and the inability to decide precisely on the most serious issues that need to be resolved, from the energy policies, to security and financial and budgetary ones, all the way to those that concern the control of individual movement in the EU space, whether it is the control of borders, legal or illegal immigration or professional mobility caused by the dynamic of the workforce.  There is no doubt, the EU should learn something, with both of its heads: "Or first of all, history teaches us that a people that doesn't move forwards is standing still, in fact it is going backwards, that the law of progress is like that, the quicker you move, the farther you get." But I am afraid that not even one of the heads of the EU will get to that wisdom on its own, and if they do, they'll fail to agree on how to use it. Just like the Brits who one day found themselves that not only are they not going forward, but they're actually going backwards!!! 

The European Union resembles to a disturbing degree that unfortunate two headed dragon, that can't agree on any decision, or action to take: one head is the government factor and it is represented by the leaders of the member countries united in a Council, or who negotiate, discuss and even decide before getting to the official meetings; the other head is made up of the big bureaucracy in Brussels, whose top representative is the European Commission. The first reactions to the Brexit?? The government "head", through the voice of Mrs. Merkel used a very "soft" tone, has hinted, that the issue should not be approached hastily, that no one should lift the stone to throw it, that the essence of the Brexit exercise, in an almost biblical sense, shouldn't be the "death of the sinner", but their redemption, if possible, and if not, at least maintaining a relationship that is as cordial as possible, and of course, mutually beneficial. Roughly speaking, Germany has commercial exchanges of approximately 60 billion Euros, in direct commercial exchanges with the United Kingdom alone!!! To avoid making it look like it was siding with the British, by in fact defending its own interests, it changed its tune at the meeting with France and Italy and went with a sterner statement, which doesn't matter anyway: we are not going to negotiate anything with the British, neither formally, nor informally, until they submit their official request to exit the EU and they'd better hurry!!! The other head of the dragon breathed fire! Even through the "nostrils" of the President of the Commission, Claude Junker, the minute the results of the referendum in the UK were announced. The warlike message was: when it comes to the exit process, no one should expect a rain of rose petals. It will be full of thorns, unpleasant and very costly. This message has two goals. One is the attempt of the bureaucracy in Brussels to nip in the bud any other potential deserters who would think that the exit from the EU might a be a pleasant walk in the park! No it is not, it is a ride through the beast infested forest! And the exit leads into a precipice! The second target is the other head of the dragon, the governmental one. It should forget the soft approaches and do what they have to do, meaning breathe fire and burn things. Or else, it runs the risk of having the world think they are dinosaurs and just like dinosaurs evolved into birds, they will turn into chicken over time, like dinosaurs devolved into birds, that anybody can just place in a pot and boil!

The Hungarian referendum is not legally binding.  A European Commission spokeswoman told this website that the “decision making process agreed to by all EU member states and as enshrined in the treaties” would “remain the same” no matter how people voted in October.  But Zoltan Kovacs, the Orban government spokesman recently told journalists in Brussels, that the outcome of the vote “cannot be disregarded by the European Commission”. “The political implications are going to be considerable,” he added.  Slovak prime minister Robert Fico, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, also told press on Wednesday (6 June) that every EU leader has a sovereign right to call a referendum. He warned that if the EU does not reform itself swiftly enough, member states, backed by angry societies, could start to pick and unpick EU policies.

“My fear is that if over the next five to six months we are not successful in finding a solution for the functioning of the EU, then there would be an increasing … possibility of referendums in different areas,” Fico said.

Hungary’s referendum aims to steer EU migration policy away from mandatory quotas and to bolster the government’s domestic support, but its political consequences could be more far-reaching.

Hungary announced Tuesday (5 June) that it would hold its referendum on migration on 2 October. “The government is asking the people of Hungary to say no to mandatory relocation and to Brussels’ immigration policy”, Antal Rogan, prime minister Viktor Orban's cabinet chief, said.

The plebiscite was first announced in February, with a government-financed campaign that started in May pasting billboards up and down the country that said: “We are sending a message to Brussels, so that they understand it too”.  Emboldened by the Brexit referendum and by the Dutch vote on Ukraine, Orban is hoping that his referendum will make him more powerful both in Europe and at home.  The question to be put to the 8 million Hungarian voters, 50 percent of whom have to show up at the ballot boxes for the outcome to be valid, asks: “Do you want the European Union to be entitled to prescribe the mandatory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary without the consent of parliament?”.  It refers to a European Commission proposal on the reform of the EU asylum system that includes permanent quotas for distributing refugees based on member states’ size and wealth.

A previous EU decision on a one-off mandatory quota to help Greece and Italy is being challenged by Hungary and by Slovakia, the current EU presidency, at the EU court in Luxembourg.