37 seats and obtaining 55.5 percent of the vote. The largest of these was the strongly anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats led by Vince Cable coming second with 16 seats, ahead of the more ambiguous Labour Party on 10. The Conservatives fell to 4 seats on 8.8 percent, the biggest ever defeat of a governing party in a UK-wide election. 24 May: Theresa May announces that she will resign as Conservative Party leader, effective 7 June, due to being unable to get her Brexit plans through parliament and several votes of no confidence, continuing as caretaker prime minister while a Conservative leadership contest takes place. 18 July: MPs approve, with a majority of 41, an amendment to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 that blocks suspension of Parliament between 9 October and 18 December, unless a new Northern Ireland Executive is formed. 24 July: Theresa May officially resigns and Boris Johnson accepts the Queen's invitation to form a new government and becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the third since the referendum. 25 July: Both Houses of Parliament go into summer recess on 25 July until 3 September. 28 August: Boris Johnson announces his intention to prorogue Parliament in September. The Queen would deliver a speech from the throne on 14 October to begin a new session. This was controversial because it would limit the time for Parliament to pass legislation ahead of the Article 50 deadline of 31 October. The Queen approved the timetable at a meeting of the Privy Council at Balmoral. 3 September: A motion for an emergency debate to pass a bill that would rule out a unilateral no-deal Brexit by forcing the Government to get parliamentary approval for either a withdrawal agreement or a no-deal Brexit. This motion, to allow the debate for the following day, passed by 328 to 301. 21 Conservative MPs voted for the motion. 4 September: The Benn Act passes second reading by 329 to 300; a 22nd Conservative, Caroline Spelman, voted against the Government position. Later the same day, MPs rejected Johnson's motion to call an October general election by a vote of 298 to 56, which failed to achieve the two-thirds Commons majority needed under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. Labour MPs abstained from the vote. 9 September: The Government again loses an attempt to call an election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. Dominic Grieve's humble address, requiring key