Kenny speaks to May on phone following snap election announcement

She said parliament would be asked to vote Wednesday to decide on whether or not to hold an election.

Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan has said he is concerned that the snap general election will hit Stormont powersharing talks.

Last month, May formerly triggered the two-year process by which Britain will leave the EU.

Opinion polls suggest she should win a clear victory on June 8, an outcome that could reduce uncertainty for investors and businesses.

Rather than helping the country unite, the election could widen divisions within the United Kingdom.

“The British people can still avoid Brexit”, Leinen said. The pound ended European trading up 1 per cent against the euro, at 83.79p, and reached a six-month high against the dollar, of $1.2767, a 1.6 per cent advance for the day.

Trump has previously hailed the result of the British referendum previous year that approved the United Kingdom´s exit from the European Union.

May’s Conservative party now has a parliamentary majority of 17.

She is understood to have changed her mind after taking advice from senior figures including Sir Lynton Crosby, mastermind of the 2015 election campaign.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn faced down calls from some MPs at a Westminster meeting on Tuesday evening for the party to abstain in the hope of forcing Mrs May to call a vote of no confidence in her own government. A year later, the unthinkable happened, and the Conservatives bumped Labour into third place in the Scottish Parliament.

The 60-year-old vicar’s daughter is Britain’s second prime minister after Margaret Thatcher and many commentators have drawn comparisons to the steely determination of the “Iron Lady”.

An election giving her a larger majority in the House of Commons would make it easier for her to ignore the “political game-playing” of the opposition parties, she said.

“I think actually it makes her look a little bit arrogant and a little bit complacent”, said Liberal Democrat lawmaker Alistair Carmichael.

Under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, the next general election date was to be in 2020.

A recent poll showed that, in a head-to-head matchup between May and Corbyn, not even a majority of Labour votes would want Corbyn as their prime minister.

“I have just chaired a meeting of the Cabinet, where we agreed that the Government should call a general election, to be held on 8 June”.

Let us tomorrow vote for an election, let us put forward our plans for Brexit and our alternative programmes for government and then let the people decide. A resounding win would bolster her mandate in upcoming talks with the European Union over the country’s exit. They see this play from May as a way to recalculate the election cycle to give her more breathing room in Brexit negotiations, and to give more room to a “soft Brexit” that will be better long term for the UK.

May’s office says she will speak after the weekly meeting of her Cabinet.

She made the surprise announcement outside 10 Downing Street on Tuesday, saying she’s delivered the stability the country needed when she became prime minister.