UK Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd quits government in Brexit protest

(Reuters) Britain’s Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd resigned from the government and the ruling Conservative Party yesterday in a protest over Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of the country’s departure from the European Union.

Johnson says he wants to take Britain out of the EU on Oct. 31 with or without a deal with the bloc. But he lost his parliamentary majority this week and expelled 21 lawmakers from his Conservative Party’s group in parliament after they supported an opposition plan to try to block a nodeal exit.

Rudd, also a former interior minister who voted remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum, said the ousting of the rebel lawmakers, who included the grandson of Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill and two former finance ministers, was an “assault on decency and democracy.”

“I have resigned from Cabinet and surrendered the Conservative whip,” Rudd said on her Twitter account.

“I cannot stand by as good, loyal moderate Conservatives are expelled. I have spoken to the PM and my association chairman to explain,” she said.

Brexit remains up in the air more than three years after Britons voted to leave the EU. Options range from a turbulent no-deal exit to abandoning the whole endeavour.

In her resignation letter to Johnson, who succeeded Theresa

LONDON

Amber Rudd (REUTERS/Hannah McKay)

May as prime minister in July, Rudd said: “I joined your cabinet in good faith: Accepting that ‘no deal’ had to be on the table, because it was the means by which we would have the best chance of achieving a new deal to leave on 31 October.“However I no longer believe leaving with a deal is the government’s main objective.”

The Sunday Times reported that at least six cabinet members share Rudd’s views, with at least one also considering resigning.

Rudd’s resignation caps a tumultuous week for Johnson that has also seen his own brother Jo quit the government, saying he was “torn between family loyalty and the national interest.” “The prime minister has run out of authority in record time and his Brexit plan has been exposed as a sham,” said Ian Lavery, chair of the main opposition Labour Party.

“No one trusts Boris Johnson. Not his Cabinet, not his MPs, not even his own brother.”

Johnson says the only solution to the Brexit impasse is a new election, which he wants to take place on Oct. 15, allowing him to win a new mandate with two weeks left to leave the bloc on time. He needs two-thirds of parliament’s lawmakers to back an early election.

But opposition parties, including Labour, said they would either vote against or abstain on calls for an election until a law to force Johnson to seek a Brexit delay is implemented.

Yesterday, it emerged lawmakers are preparing legal action as they believe Johnson could try to defy the legislation compelling him to seek a further delay to Brexit.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s top aide, is creating a shadow team of advisors to work on plans to fight an expected emergency judicial review in Britain’s highest court, the supreme court, next month if Johnson is unable to secure an election next week.

An opinion poll on election voting intentions carried out by YouGov for the Sunday Times put the Conservatives on 35 percent, Labour on 21 percent, the pro-remain Liberal Democrats on 19 percent and the Brexit Party on 12 percent. ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (Reuters)- Pope Francis said yesterday that rapid deforestation and the loss of biodiversity in individual countries should not be treated as local issues since they threaten the future of the planet.

Francis made his appeal on a visit to Madagascar, the world’s fourth-largest island, which research institutes and aid agencies say has lost about 44 percent of its forest over the past 60 years, abetted by illegal exports of rosewood and ebony.

Francis zeroed in on endemic corruption, linking it with persistent, long-term poverty as well as poaching and illegal exports of natural resources.

Addressing Madagascar’s president, Andry Rajoelina, his cabinet and other officials, Francis said some people were profiting from excessive deforestation and the associated loss of species.

“The deterioration of that biodiversity compromises the future of the country and of the earth, our common home,” he said.

Following recent huge fires in the Amazon region, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rejected international criticism about his policy to expand farmland, saying it was a domestic issue.

“The last forests are menaced by forest fires, poaching, the unrestricted cutting down of valuable woodlands. Plant and animal biodiversity is endangered by contraband and illegal exportation,” Pope Francis said.

Jobs must be created for people whose livelihood harms the environment so they will not see it as their only means of survival, the pontiff added.

“There can be no true ecological approach or effective efforts to safeguard the environment without the attainment of a social justice capable of respecting the right to the common destination of the Earth’s goods, not only of present generations, but also of those yet to come,” he said.

“CORRUPTION AND SPECULATION”

The Amazon fires have lent new urgency to Francis’s calls to protect nature, tackle climate change and promote sustainable development — all themes enshrined in his 2015 encyclical on environmental protection.

Madagascar is one of world’s poorest countries. The U.N. Nations World Food Program estimates that more than 90 percent of its population of 26 million live on less than $2 a day, with chronic child malnutrition widespread. Corruption is also rampant, Transparency International says.

Francis urged the nation’s leaders “to fight with strength and determination all endemic forms of corruption and speculation that increase social disparity, and to confront the situations of great instability and exclusion that always create conditions of inhumane poverty”.

Conservation groups say that during Rajoelina’s first stint in power, his cash-strapped administration presided over a spike in deforestation to supply rosewood and ebony to China despite a national ban on such exports.

Environmental campaign group TRAFFIC estimates that at least one million rosewood logs have been illegally shipped from Madagascar since 2010.

As Asian supplies of valuable hardwoods including rosewood used to make luxury furniture have been depleted, Chinese importers have shifted to Africa, according to Chinese customs data cited by U.S.-based non-profit group Forest Trends.

Later yesterday, Francis visited a convent of cloistered nuns and joked about the challenges of dealing with strict superiors.

In the evening, he addressed some 100,000 young people at a rally in a field on the outskirts of the capital, urging them to help bring social justice to their country.