May battles to save deal as ministers quit

London, November 15 

Prime Minister Theresa May battled on Thursday 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.

Their departure, the resignations of two junior ministers and reports others were considering quitting, 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. Raab is the second Brexit secretary to quit over May’s plans to leave the EU, the biggest shift in British policy in more than 40 years. By leaving now, some suggested that Raab could be positioning himself as a possible successor to May.

But the PM 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.

She said those lawmakers who believed she could get a deal that did not include a backstop arrangement to prevent the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland were wrong. Her spokesman said May 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 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 that it was dead on arrival,” Conservative lawmaker Mark Francois said.

One eurosceptic lawmaker in May’s Conservative Party said more colleagues were either putting in letters to trigger a no-confidence vote in her leadership or were increasingly minded to do so. A challenge is triggered if 48 Conservatives write such letters. May could be toppled if 158 of her 315 lawmakers vote against her. — Reuters

Indian-origin minister Shailesh Vara leads resignations

Indian-origin minister, Shailesh Vara, Conservative Party MP for North-West Cambridgeshire, and two other ministers resigned on Thursday from her divided Cabinet over United Kingdom’s “half-baked” divorce deal with the 28-member European Union

Raab’s resignation was followed by another pro-Brexit minister, work and pensions secretary Esther McVey, announcing that she is resigning from the Cabinet over the issue

Minutes after Vara stepped down as Northern Ireland minister, May was hit by a bigger blow as her Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab resigned saying he “cannot in good conscience” support the draft of the withdrawal agreement with the 28-member bloc

Suella Braverman is the latest minister to resign over draft deal. She is a junior minister in the Brexit ministry and she resigned shortly after her former boss Raab quit  

PM could be replaced in weeks: Rees-mogg  

• A leadership challenge to British Prime Minister Theresa May could be completed in weeks, eurosceptic lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg said on Thursday. “I think it can be done quite quickly. I think the parliamentary processes can be sped up,” he said, adding “not months, but I think weeks” when asked about a timeframe
• He named Boris Johnson, David Davis, Esther McVey and Dominic Raab, who have all quit May’s cabinet this year, as possible future leaders, as well as Penny Mordaunt, who was widely rumoured to be considering her cabinet position