PM May suffers severe blow on Brexit as Ministers quit

Britain's Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, Dominic Raab gestures during a press briefing after a meeting at the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium August 31, 2018 - REUTERS

LONDON (Reuters): British Prime Minister Theresa May was dealt a severe blow on Thursday when her Brexit Secretary and another Minister quit, striking at the heart of a draft divorce deal with the EU she is battling to sell to her party, Parliament and the country.

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, and the resignation of a Junior Minister, shook May’s divided Government. Raab is the second Brexit Secretary to quit over May’s plans to leave the European Union, 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.

“Above all, I cannot reconcile the terms of the proposed deal with the promises we made to the country in our manifesto at the last election,” Raab said.

“This is, at its heart, a matter of public trust,” Raab said. “I cannot support the proposed deal.”

Less than five months until Britain leaves the EU on 29 March, the resignations put May’s Brexit strategy in doubt.

EU leaders are ready to meet on 25 November to sign off on the divorce deal, or Withdrawal Agreement, but the drama is in London with some lawmakers openly questioning whether the Government will be intact by the end of the month.

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 a majority of her lawmakers vote against her. Britain’s opposition Labour Party said the Government was “falling apart”.

“Theresa May has no authority left and is clearly incapable of delivering a Brexit deal that commands even the support of her Cabinet, let alone Parliament and the people of our country,” said Jon Trickett, a member of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s senior team.

Raab, 44, was appointed to the role of Brexit Secretary in July this year following the resignation of his predecessor David Davis, who also quit in protest at May’s Brexit strategy.

At the heart of Raab’s criticism of May’s deal was the belief that the pursuit of a customs union with the EU would be the “starting point” for talks on the future relationship with the bloc, “severely prejudicing” what Britain could achieve.

He said May’s plan threatened the integrity of Britain and he could not support an indefinite backstop arrangement – to prevent a return to a hard border on the island of Ireland – where the EU had a veto over Britain’s ability to exit.

“No democratic nation has ever signed up to be bound by such an extensive regime, imposed externally without any democratic control over the laws to be applied, nor the ability to decide to exit the arrangement,” Raab said in his resignation letter.

“That arrangement is now also taken as the starting point for negotiating the Future Economic Partnership. If we accept that, it will severely prejudice the second phase of negotiations against the UK.”

Eurosceptics in May’s party have long feared that the prime Minister was leading Britain towards a customs union with the EU, something, they say, would mean a Brexit in name.

 “If anything resembles a customs union then it is not Brexit,” one eurosceptic Conservative lawmaker said recently.