Theresa May will become Britain's prime minister on Wednesday

Theresa May, Britain's Home Secretary, was a Brexit oppponent before the vote. Now she's becoming the nation's most important Brexit supporter, because fellow Brexit opponent David Cameron couldn't bring himself to abide by the people's vote and leave the EU. So Cameron will step down as prime minister - not in October as first announced, but tomorrow - and May will succeed him with the difficult task of executing the decision the people made. And execute it she will:

"I am honored and humbled to have been chosen by the Conservative Party to become its leader," said May, who favored remaining in the EU but has made clear there is no going back on the result of the June 23 referendum. "Brexit means Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it." Earlier, Cameron told reporters in front of his 10 Downing Street residence that he expected to chair his last cabinet meeting on Tuesday and take questions in parliament on Wednesday before tendering his resignation to Queen Elizabeth. "So we will have a new prime minister in that building behind me by Wednesday evening," he said. May will become Britain's second female prime minister, after Margaret Thatcher. Her victory means that the complex process of extricating Britain from the EU will be led by someone from the losing side of the acrimonious referendum campaign. She has said Britain needs time to work out its negotiating strategy and should not initiate formal divorce proceedings before the end of the year. In a speech earlier on Monday in the city of Birmingham, May said there could be no second referendum and no attempt to rejoin the EU by the back door. "As prime minister, I will make sure that we leave the European Union," she said.

That's a refreshing attitude, and one that seems hard to find among the governing elites of the West. May is not going to attempt a second referundum to undo the first, nor is she going to countenance any nonsense about Parliament simply ignoring the outcome of the vote and staying in the EU anyway. Perhaps that's because May recognizes that even if she didn't seek the outcome the voters gave her, she understands that their concerns about taking back sovereignty on questions like immigration policy were not the result of racism or xenophobia. They were rational qualms about a transnational system that robbed Britain of much of its freedom to govern itself as it chooses. That the transfer of power is happening so quickly is a little unexpected, but keep in mind that this is not an entirely new government. The Tories still control Parliament and they still form the government. I suspect that much of the cabinet will remain unchanged. But Cameron was so anti-Brexit that he didn't think he could carry out what the people decided, so to his credit he got out of the way, and May will now have the task of doing so. I'd say that's a good bit better than what many U.S. politicians do, which is to hang on like grim death to power no matter what it requires of them, and find ways to ignore anyone's agenda but their own. If that sounds like anyone that's coming to your mind, then maybe you should start demanding more humility and less arrogance from your political leaders like they're now getting in Great Britain.

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