BREXIT MELTDOWN
OPPONENTS MAUL PM’S DEAL AT HOME, LABOUR SAYS GOVERNMENT ‘FALLING APART’
May battles in parliament to save draft EU divorce deal.
Ministers quit, lawmakers demand premier’s ouster.
Pound and bank stocks tumble amid political chaos.
MPs renew calls for second referendum
Prime Minister Theresa May battled yesterday to save a draft divorce deal with the European Union after her Brexit secretary and other ministers quit in protest at an agreement they say will trap Britain in the bloc’s orbit for years.
Just over 12 hours after May announced that her team of top ministers had agreed to the terms of the draft agreement, Brexit minister Dominic Raab and work and pensions minister Esther McVey quit, saying they could not support it.
Two junior ministers, two ministerial aides and the Conservatives’ vice-chairman joined Raab and McVey in quitting. This shakes May’s divided government and her Brexit strategy, raising the prospect of Britain leaving the EU without a deal. Some lawmakers openly questioned whether May’s government could survive.
But the prime minister showed little sign of backing down. In parliament she warned lawmakers they now faced a stark decision. “The choice is clear. We can choose to leave with no deal, we can risk no Brexit at all, or we can choose to unite and support the best deal that can be negotiated,” she said.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of a Conservative euro-sceptic group in parliament, said the draft was “worse than anticipated”, and he had formally requested a vote of no confidence in May. At least 14 Conservative lawmakers openly said they had submitted such letters, although others could have done so secretly. Forty-eight are needed to trigger a challenge.
May’s spokesman said she would fight any vote of confidence in her premiership and she intended to be prime minister when Britain leaves the bloc in March next year.
In financial markets, the pound slumped nearly 2 per cent against the dollar $1.2731, although it recovered slightly after May’s statement.
British financial regulators called major banks asking for feedback on market conditions because of sharp falls in the pound and shares, sources said.
In parliament, lawmakers from her Conservative Party and the opposition parties took turns to rubbish the draft deal, a sign May faces an all but impossible task to get the agreement through the House of Commons.
Many criticised the draft deal, agreed with the EU on Tuesday, for making Britain a “vassal” state, beholden to the bloc’s rules even after leaving on March 29.
Others said an agreement on the so-called backstop would tear Britain apart, leaving Northern Ireland all but in the EU’s single market. “It is ... mathematically impossible to get this deal through the House of Commons. The stark reality is it was dead on arrival,” Conservative lawmaker Mark Francois said.
But it was the backstop arrangement, which would see Britain and the EU establishing a single customs territory, that spurred most of the criticism.
“I cannot reconcile the terms of the proposed deal with the promises we made to the country in our manifesto at the last election,” Raab said.