(Bloomberg) -- U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May refused to say whether she would vote to leave the European Union if a new referendum were held.
Her remarks to Sky News during a visit to South Africa sit uneasily with her message hours earlier that there would be little to worry about if Britain leaves the bloc next March without an agreement on the terms of the divorce.
May opposed Brexit during the 2016 referendum and as prime minister, she's vowed to deliver on the wishes of the British people. But pro-Brexit members of her Conservative Party suspect she's not fully committed to their cause, with some openly calling for her to be replaced with a true believer.
May has been asked before if she'd vote for Brexit in another referendum and has tried to dodge the question, a tactic she deployed again this time.
“That is a hypothetical question, and I don't answer hypothetical questions,” May said on Tuesday. “We're not in the business of having a second referendum on Brexit. What we're in the business of doing is delivering Brexit so actually, what somebody would vote for today is not the issue.”
Despite May's argument, a campaign is already gathering support for a fresh national vote on the terms of the U.K.'s departure.
To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Morales in Cape Town at amorales2@bloomberg.net;Tim Ross in London at tross54@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs, Mark Williams
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