May, maybe not: Brexit row sparks resignations
The agreement got tenuous backing from May’s cabinet after a marathon session on Wednesday, but cracks emerged with the resignations of four ministers, including, ironically, Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, central to reaching the agreement.
The future of Theresa May as Britain’s Prime Minister was in doubt on Thursday after a draft Brexit agreement finalised after months of fractious talks with Brussels triggered a series of resignations and a growing challenge to her leadership.
The agreement got tenuous backing from May’s cabinet after a marathon session on Wednesday, but cracks emerged with the resignations of four ministers, including, ironically, Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, central to reaching the agreement.
Besides Raab, those who resigned included cabinet minister Esther McVey and Indian-origin ministers of state Shailesh Vara and Suella Braverman (nee Fernandes), two parliamentary private secretaries and two other aides. Braverman was a minister in Raab's Brexit department.
The agreement envisages continued links with the European Union after the UK leaves the bloc on March 29, 2019, infuriating hardliners in May’s Conservative Party, and uniting supporters and opponents of Brexit. Calls for another referendum to resolve the imbroglio grew.
As the agreement set off reverberations in Westminster and the markets, European Council president Donald Tusk scheduled a meeting on November 25 to “finalise and formalise” the pact. It is then supposed to be ratified by the parliaments of the UK and 27 EU states.
But the parliamentary arithmetic is against May, who was repeatedly told by her MPs and others that the agreement will be defeated in the House of Commons. May heads a minority government with support from Northern Ireland-based Democratic Unionist Party, which too declared its intention to vote against the agreement.
Raab, whose resignation was the most significant, said: “I cannot reconcile the terms of the proposed deal with the promises we made to the country in our manifesto at the last election. This is, at its heart, a matter of public trust.”
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group comprising party lawmakers who lobby for a hard Brexit or complete break from the EU, declared no confidence in May, and led a series of such letters by MPs. A leadership challenge will be triggered if 48 Conservatives write such letters to the chairman of the party’s so-called 1922 committee. May can be toppled if 158 of her 315 lawmakers vote against her.
May was grilled in the House of Commons for more than three hours on the agreement, and insisted that it included the best possible terms of leaving the EU. The heated exchanges were marked by minimal support for the agreement even from Conservative MPs.
She said: “Delivering Brexit involves difficult choices for all of us…I do not pretend that this has been a comfortable process – or that either we or the EU are entirely happy with all of the arrangements that have been included within it.
“I know it’s been a frustrating process – it has forced us to confront some very difficult issues. But a good Brexit, a Brexit which is in the national interest is possible. We have persevered and have made a decisive breakthrough.”
She added, “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.”
Her view of the agreement was trenchantly opposed by Raab, other Conservative MPs and even Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said May’s government was “falling apart”, and called the agreement “a huge and damaging failure”.
Corbyn added: “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. The government is in chaos.
“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?”