‘Patriotic’ anti-Brexit Tories’ plea for PM meeting

A GROUP of anti-Brexit Conservative MPs and peers have written to the Prime Minister asking for a meeting to discuss their call for Britain’s EU withdrawal to be delayed.

The Right to Vote group includes former attorney general Dominic Grieve and ex-Ministers Phillip Lee, Sam Gyimah and Guto Bebb who quit Theresa May’s Government to fight for a second referendum.

In their letter to Mrs May, they said it is clear the UK is “not ready to leave” on the scheduled date of March 29. They urged the PM to pause the process to give politicians and voters the time to consider whether her proposed deal - or the prospect of departure without a deal - is in the national interest.

Describing themselves as “patriotic, pragmatic Conservatives”, they requested an urgent meeting with the PM, noting that she had made time to speak to pro-Brexit MPs on a number of occasions.

With fewer than 50 days until the UK is due to leave the EU, Parliament is in “gridlock” over Brexit, the letter’s signatories said. “We are now effectively faced with the stark reality between a devastating no deal, for which the country would rightly never forgive us, and a compromise which virtually noone on any side of the argument is happy with,” they wrote.