Good afternoon everybody,It is now clearly the will of the parliamentary conservative party that there should be a new leader of that partyand therefore a new Prime Ministerand I have agreed with Sir Graham Bradythe chairman of our backbench MPsthat the process of choosing that new leader should begin nowand the timetable will be announced next weekand I have today appointed a cabinet to serve - as I will - until a new leader is in placeso I want to say to the millions of people who voted for us in 2019 – many of them voting Conservative for the first timethank you for that incredible mandatethe biggest Conservative majority since 1987the biggest share of the vote since 1979and the reason I have fought so hard for the last few days to continue to deliver that mandate in personwas not just because I wanted to do sobut because I felt it was my job, my duty, my obligation to you to continue to do what we promised in 2019and of course I am immensely proud of the achievements of this governmentfrom getting Brexit done and settling our relations with the continent after half a centuryreclaiming the power for this country to make its own laws in parliamentgetting us all through the pandemicdelivering the fastest vaccine rollout in Europethe fastest exit from lockdownand in the last few months leading the west in standing up to Putin’s aggression in Ukraineand let me say now to the people of Ukraine that I know that we in the UK will continue to back your fight for freedom for as long as it takesand at the same time in this country we have at the same time been pushing forward a vast programme of investment in infrastructure, skills and technologythe biggest for a centurybecause if I have one insight into human beingsit is that genius and talent and enthusiasm and imagination are evenly distributed throughout the populationbut opportunity is notand that is why we need to keep levelling upkeep unleashing the potential of every part of the United Kingdomand if we can do that in this country, we will be the most prosperous in Europeand in the last few days I have tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governmentswhen we are delivering so muchand when we have such a vast mandate and when we are actually only a handful of points behind in the pollseven in mid term after quite a few months of pretty unrelenting sledgingand when the economic scene is so difficult domestically and internationallyand I regret not to have been successful in those argumentsand of course it is painful not to be able to see through so many ideas and projects myselfbut as we’ve seen at Westminster, the herd is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves andand my friends in politics no one is remotely indispensableAnd our brilliant and Darwinian system will produce another leader equally committed to taking this country forward through tough timesnot just helping families to get through it but changing and improving our systems, cutting burdens on businesses and familiesand – yes – cutting taxesbecause that is the way to generate the growth and the income we need to pay for great public servicesand to that new leader I say, whoever he or she may be, I will give you as much support as I canand to you the British people I know that there will be many who are relievedbut perhaps quite a few who will be disappointedand I want you to know how sad I am to give up the best job in the worldbut them’s the breaksI want to thank Carrie and our children, to all the members of my family who have had to put up with so much for so longI want to thank the peerless British civil service for all the help and support that you have givenour police, our emergency services and of course our NHS who at a critical moment helped to extend my own period in officeas well as our armed services and our agencies that are so admired around the world and[Political content ommitted]I want to thank the wonderful staff here at Number Ten and of course at chequers and our fantastic protforce detectives – the one group, by the way, who never leakand above all I want to thank you the British public for the immense privilege you have given meand I want you to know that from now until the new Prime Minister is in place, your interests will be served and the government of the country will be carried onBeing Prime Minister is an education in itselfI have travelled to every part of the United Kingdom and in addition to the beauty of our natural worldI have found so many people possessed of such boundless British originality and so willing to tackle old problems in new ways that I know that even if things can sometimes seem dark now, our future together is golden.Thank you all very much.Updates to this page