Setback hits Brexit deal
BRITISH cabinet ministers, including Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, resigned yesterday in opposition to the divorce deal struck by Prime Minister Theresa May with the EU – a major blow to her authority and her ability to get the deal through parliament.
The resignations, less than a day after the cabinet collectively backed the draft divorce agreement, weakens May and is likely to embolden her rivals within her Conservative Party. A leadership challenge is being openly discussed.
“I cannot in good conscience support the terms proposed for our deal with the EU,” Raab said in a letter to the prime minister.
Raab is the second Brexit secretary that May has lost – David Davis, who like Raab backed Brexit in the UK’s June 2016 EU membership referendum, quit in July of this year.
Work and pensions secretary Esther McVey followed Raab out the door. She said in a letter that it is “no good trying to pretend to (voters) that this deal honours the result of the referendum”. Several junior ministers have also quit.
Pro-Brexit politicians say the agreement, which calls for close trade ties between the UK and the bloc, wouldleave Britain a vassal state, bound to EU rules that it has no say in making.
Before parliament votes on the deal, EU leaders have to give their backing. Yesterday, EU chief Donald Tusk called for a summit of leaders to take place on November 25 so they can rubber-stamp the draft Brexit deal reached by officials earlier this week.
Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the main opposition Labour party, said: “After two years of bungled negotiations, the government has produced a botched deal… and does not meet our six tests,” he told parliament. “The government is in chaos. Their deal risks leaving the country in an indefinite halfway house without a real say.
“The government simply cannot put to parliament this half-baked deal that both the Brexit secretary and his predecessor have rejected,” he said.
May could be forced to rely on votes from Labour rebels to get the deal through parliament
Meanwhile, Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading eurosceptic among the Conservatives, has written to the party asking it to trigger a confidence vote among members that could force a leadership contest. He wrote that May’s Brexit deal “has turned out to be worse than anticipated and fails to meet the promises given to the nation by the prime minister”.
Meanwhile in Brussels, Tusk heaped praise on the EU’s Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, who had “achieved the two most important objectives” for the bloc – limiting the damage caused by Britain’s impending departure and maintaining the interests of the other 27 countries that will remain in the EU.