Brexit minister quits over plan

‘DANGEROUS’: GIVES TOO MUCH AWAY TO EU – DAVIS

After May thrashes out deal with Cabinet to keep closest trade ties with the bloc.

Brexit Secretary David Davis said yesterday he had resigned over “dangerous” British government plans for leaving the European Union in a blow to Prime Minister Theresa May that could complicate already fraught Brexit negotiations.

Davis, who campaigned for Brexit in Britain’s 2016 referendum, said a hard-won agreement with her Cabinet team of ministers had given “too much away, too easily” to EU negotiators.

His late-night departure, followed by one other minister in the Brexit department, raises the stakes for May, who was buoyed on Friday after thrashing out a deal with her Cabinet to keep the closest possible trading ties with the EU.

Many eurosceptics have expressed anger over the agreed negotiating stance, calling it a betrayal of her promise for a clean break with the bloc.

But by appointing Brexit campaigner Dominic Raab as Davis’ replacement, May might quell some of that anger.

Sterling rallied as traders bet Davis’ resignation would not endanger May and instead focused on the newly announced deal that markets believe makes a “soft Brexit” more likely. Davis’ resignation may also further disrupt Brexit talks, with less than nine months before Britain leaves and just over three before the EU says it wants a deal that will mark Britain’s biggest foreign and trade policy shift in decades.

Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit coordinator, said he hoped Britain would unite “around a position to conclude a broad Association Agreement with the EU”.

Davis feared the EU would “take what we have offered already and then demand some more”.

That had been their practice throughout the past year and he feared, if anything, this was just the start. “It seems to me we are giving too much away, too easily, and that is a dangerous strategy at this time,” he told BBC radio.