Brexit fallout: May rocked by flurry of resignations
BRUISING SESSION Many Conservatives, Labour to vote against pact with EU LONDON:
Grilled in the House of Commons over the controversial draft Brexit agreement, Prime Minister Theresa May suffered six resignations on Thursday, including Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, as many of her MPs and the opposition Labour Party declared their intention to vote against it.
The resignations that hit the pound included Indian-origin ministers Shailesh Vara, who was minister in the Northern Ireland Office, and Suella Braverman, minister in the Brexit department. Esther McVey, another cabinet minister, and junior ministers Anne-Marie Trevelyan (education) and Ranil Jayawardena (justice) also quit.
There was talk of unhappy Conservative MPs gathering the required numbers to trigger a vote of no-confidence in May, while party lawmakers and others continued to make the case for another referendum, now that the economic and other consequences of Brexit are clearer than they were during the 2016 vote.
Of the resignations, the most significant was that of Raab, who was responsible for talks with Brussels, but ended up leaving hours after Wednesday’s marathon cabinet meeting, where May managed to get tenuous support for the draft agreement.
After May insisted the agreement was in the national interest, Raab said in his resignation letter: “I cannot reconcile the terms of the proposed deal with the promises we made to the country in our manifesto at the last elec- tion. This is, at its heart, a matter of public trust.”
The agreement will now be put before the European Council on November 25, and then placed before the parliaments of the UK and 27 EU member states for ratification. The draft has united critics and supporters of Brexit, who insisted they will vote it down in the British Parliament, and thus create another crisis.
May heads a minority government supported by the Northern Ireland-based Democratic Unionist Party, whose leaders made it clear they will vote against the agreement. More than 80 ruling Conservative Party lawmakers have confirmed they will vote against it. As May faced a tough time responding to questions from her party MPs and others, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said her government is in “chaos” and called the pact that envisages continued links with the EU after the exit on March 29 as “a huge and damaging failure”.
Corbyn said: “After two years of bungled negotiations, the government has produced a botched deal that breaches the prime minister’s own red lines and does not meet our six tests.
“Their deal risks leaving the country in an indefinite halfway house without a real say. When even the last Brexit secretary, who theoretically at least negotiated the deal, says ‘I cannot support the proposed deal’, what faith does that give anyone else in this place or in this country?”
In Brussels, EU President Donald Tusk on Thursday confirmed the bloc would hold a special summit on November 25 to seal the Brexit pact with UK.
Ambassadors from the 27 remaining EU states will meet by the end of the week to share their analysis of the withdrawal deal, Tusk said, adding he hoped “there will not be too many comments.”