Under pressure, Prime Minister Theresa May defended her Brexit plan in parliament as three more ministers resigned. A summit of EU leaders has been scheduled to discuss the deal later this month.
UK Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab became the second of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Cabinet to resign on Thursday. He followed a minister in the Northern Ireland office and preceded the later resignation of Work and Pensions minister Esther McVey.
“I regret to say that, following the Cabinet meeting yesterday on the Brexit deal, I must resign,” Raab said via Twitter. “I cannot in good conscience support the terms proposed for our deal
with the EU.” The previous Brexit minister, David Davis, resigned in July.
Current environment minister Michael Gove is rumored to have been offered the Brexit minister’s post.
McVey told the Prime Minister the deal “does not honor the result of the referendum,” and would “trap us in a customs union.”
The UK government presented the 585-page withdrawal agreement to parliament on Thursday, after Prime Minister Theresa May put the proposal to her cabinet on Wednesday.
Parliamentary challenge
There were reports of dissent to the deal from within May’s cabinet with up to 10 ministers saying they were not happy. Shailesh Vara, a minister in the Northern Ireland office was the first to quit on Thursday over what he called a “halfway house” agreement.
May faces a challenge getting the deal approved by the House of Commons. There are reports of challenges both to the deal and her leadership. The prime minister presented the deal in terms of being the only option: “The choice before us is clear,” May said after the 5-hour cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “This deal …. or leave with no deal, or no Brexit at all.”
Speaking to the house on Thursday morning, May repeated those comments and asked lawmakers to give the deal their backing.
“I recognise that we have a further stage of negotiation with the European Council and then that deal when finalised … has to come back to this House,” May told the House of Commons.
There were few voices in support of the prime minister in what is being seen as the most significant parliamentary debate in decades.
With only 315 seats in the 650-seat assembly, the Conservatives are short of a parliamentary majority. May depends on the support of Northern Ireland’s DUP party with its 10 MPs and the absence of 7 Sinn Fein representatives, who do not take up their seats, to win votes in the house. There have been 16 resignations from the government since last November — eight of them related to Brexit.
EU summit
President of the European Council Donald Tusk announced on Thursday that the planned meeting for EU leaders in Brussels to discuss the draft Brexit agreement reached between the EU and the UK would take place on Sunday, November 25.
“Let me say to our British friends,” Tusk wrote on Twitter “as much as I am sad to see you leave, I will do everything to make this farewell the least painful possible, both for you and for us.”