Resignations act as a rallying call
• British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson accused Theresa May of killing Brexit as he resigned Monday and plunged the prime minister’s leadership into crisis.
Johnson told May the Brexit “dream is dying, suffocated by self-doubt” and accused her of raising the “white flag” of surrender to the European Union.
Under May’s Brexit plan, Johnson predicted that “we are truly headed for the status of a colony”.
Johnson’s departure came less than 24 hours after Brexit Secretary David Davis and Steve Baker, a junior Brexit minister, also quit.
Johnson’s resignation inflicted a brutal blow to the authority of the prime minister, who Monday night insisted she would stay and fight for re-election should MPs force a no-confidence vote.
May told Johnson she was “sorry, and a little surprised” by his departure, “after the productive discussions” concerning a Brexit compromise deal hammered out on Friday at Chequers, the prime minister’s country retreat.
But she added that “it is right that you should step down” if he could not support her Brexit deal.
The resignations acted as a rallying call to Brexiters who have vowed to do whatever it takes to kill off the Chequers agreement on Brexit. Sources in the European Research Group (ERG) of Eurosceptic Tory MPs claimed they had other ministers “lined up” to resign one by one until May was forced to tear up her plans.
Two more junior members of the government resigned Monday night.
Conor Burns, parliamentary private secretary to Johnson, quit, saying: “I want to see the referendum result respected.” Chris Green, a parliamentary private secretary at the Department for Transport, also resigned.
Even if May survives as prime minister, her chances of getting her Brexit deal through Parliament were diminishing by the hour as more and more Conservative MPs voiced their opposition, and Labour said they would not support the plan.
In his resignation letter, Johnson accused May of steering Britain toward “semi-Brexit.”
“It is as though we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them.”
He said the government had “gone backwards” with its compromises at Chequers, offering the EU major concessions on free movement, regulatory divergence, customs and trade and he feared “further concessions on immigration” or agreeing to pay for access to the single market.