In a series of broadcast interviews, May said: “There’s two ways the government can react to that. We can be very timid and sit back or we can be bold and that’s what we are going to be.”
The Conservative leader also said: “I think it was the right decision to actually call that election. I’d hoped for a different result.”
Speaking to reporters on the plane journey to the G20 summit, she was asked if she had her “mojo back” and whether she would still be prime minister in a year’s time at the next G20 in Argentina.
“I’m doing absolutely what I always do which is getting on with the job, which is delivering a stable government for the United Kingdom, ensuring that we focus on the key issue of getting those Brexit negotiations right,” she said.
However, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was due to say on Friday night that May’s premiership “cannot last”, telling a gathering in Durham that his party is the “government in waiting”.
May pointed to legislation in her Queen’s speech on domestic violence and mental health, claiming she was determined to see the policies through.
“As you know, I think mental health is an issue that has been left to one side for too long and we need to firmly address that in everybody’s interests,” she added.
Asked if how she was personally affected by the election result she simply said: “Well, I’m still prime minister.”
The Conservative leader, who has earned the nickname of the Maybot, was asked by Channel 4’s Matt Frei whether critics who called her robotic and heartless had misunderstood her.
“I think what’s important is that we get on with the job and getting on with the job is about delivering for people,” she replied.
May insisted that she had not lost influence on the world stage, after taking a seat next to the US president, Donald Trump, at the first G20 session. “The 19 countries sitting around the table will be listening and will be taking us seriously and will be working with us.”
May aims to use the G20 summit to try to highlight Britain’s future trading possibilities in a series of bilateral meetings with non-EU leaders, including Trump, Chinese president Xi Jinping, and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. On Saturday, as well as seeing Trump, May will meet the leaders of Turkey and Japan, Recep Tayipp Erdoğan and Shinzo Abe.
A senior UK official said that May would welcome the EU-Japan trade deal – signed in recent days – but also said that she would like to “take forward discussions on how that may prove the basis for a deal with Britain when we leave the European Union”. The official added that the meeting with Trump would also be focused on “progress with a post-Brexit US-UK trade agreement”. In addition, during a 30-minute bilateral meeting with President Xi on Friday, May spoke of a “golden era” in relations between China and the UK.
Conservative MPs are mostly backing May for now, fearing that replacing her could lead to pressure for another general election, which Labour would be favourite to win, given its new lead in the polls. A survey for YouGov and the Times put Jeremy Corbyn’s party eight points ahead at 46% of the vote, thought to be the highest score it has ever recorded.
No Tory MP has publicly called for May to set a timetable for her departure, but possible successors have been working on winning the support of their colleagues behind the scenes. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, made a rare appearance on the House of Commons terrace earlier this week to socialise with backbenchers.
In a sign of her weakness, the prime minister has been having difficulty commanding the loyalty of her cabinet. Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, jokingly compared her administration to the dying days of John Major’s government when faced with the challenge of the then popular and charismatic Tony Blair.
Johnson, Justine Greening, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove have also broken with the party line to signal they would like to see the 1% cap on public sector pay lifted.
A anonymous junior minister was reported by the Telegraph and the Sun as having considered resigning to prompt a leadership contest before the party’s autumn conference. The minister is said to have described her as a “three-legged horse and a “ragdoll” PM “pushed around” on issues such as public sector pay by a cabinet “clearly just positioning for a contest in two years’ time.”
But one Conservative MP said such a move by his colleagues would be “extremely foolish” given the poll boost enjoyed by Corbyn since 8 June, as the pressure for an election would be huge. “It would be a recipe for putting us out of power for a generation,” he said.
With Labour riding high in the polls, Corbyn will make the claim that “this government cannot last” when he addresses the Durham Miners’ Gala.
He will tell the crowd of about 200,000 people that people are “fed up with the hypocrisy and the dishonesty of the Conservative party” and pitch Labour as “no longer just in opposition but a government-in-waiting”.
“We have a huge opportunity now to change our country for the better if we learn the lessons of this great movement, stay united, stay disciplined and work together,” he will say.
“No government that votes to cut the living standards of over 5 million public sector workers can last for long or deserves to last for long.
“It is the hypocrisy that turns the stomach, when in the terrorist attacks or the Grenfell Tower fire, these Conservative politicians give warm words of praise and then a week later vote to cut those same people’s incomes, having cut thousands of their colleagues’ jobs already.”
Corbyn will say the Conservatives always claim there is not enough money for public services but find enough to spend on starting wars, tax giveaways to the rich, new grammar schools or other “hare-brained schemes to benefit their friends”.
Under Labour, the government would address inequality caused by the Conservatives and “turn around this monstrosity and build a fairer, more equal Britain”.
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