Smith sacked for airing his views on Brexit

LONDON: Britain’s opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sacked his shadow Northern Ireland minister on Friday after he called for a second referendum on Brexit, a move that exposes deep divisions in the party over whether to leave the EU.

Owen Smith, who challenged Corbyn for the party leadership in 2016, wrote in the Guardian newspaper on Friday urging his party to reopen the question of whether Brexit was the right decision.

Smith said he was sacked for voicing his opinion that Brexit would damage the UK economy and threaten the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, which ended decades of armed sectarian conflict in the province.

“Those views are shared by Labour members and supporters and I will continue to speak up for them and in the interest of our country,” Smith said in a Twitter post.

Britain is due to formally leave the EU on March 29 next year.

Smith will be replaced by a former Labour minister, Tony Lloyd, who returned to parliament last year after quitting in 2012 to become police and crime commissioner in Manchester.

Peter Hain, the former Northern Ireland minister and a Labour lawmaker in the House of Lords, Britain’s unelected upper house, accused Corbyn of carrying out of a “Stalinist purge”. – Reuters/african News Agency (ANA)