TURMOIL: Ministers Quit Over PM May’s Brexit Draft

CBS News reports:

The morning after the night before was a rough one for British Prime Minister Theresa May. On Wednesday night, she announced that she’d won her cabinet’s backing for her draft proposal on how the U.K. should pull out of the European Union. On Thursday morning, May’s Brexit secretary, the man who led her negotiating team in Brussels to hammer out that draft, quit, along with another member of her cabinet and several junior ministers.

Dominic Raab, the second of May’s Brexit secretaries to quit the role in as many years, said the draft agreement reached with Brussels would effectively leave Britain beholden to the rules and regulations of the European Union and even give the EU the power to stop the U.K. from extricating itself down the road. He said he could not “in good conscious support the terms” of the deal he helped to craft.

NBC News reports:

Lawmakers might not only vote against May’s deal, but also hold a vote of no confidence in her government that could trigger another general election. A more likely scenario emerging Thursday was an internal leadership contest in her Conservative Party that would see her replaced as party leader and prime minister.

The chief E.U. negotiator, Michel Barnier, hailed the draft deal as a “decisive step” in the 20-month process, which began when Britain voted in a June 2016 referendum to leave the trading bloc. “If nothing extraordinary happens,” a summit to finalize the agreement would be held later in the month, European leaders said early Thursday.

CNN reports:



May, who faces the uphill battle of winning Parliament’s approval for the agreement, said she respected the views of those who had quit Thursday over the deal. She acknowledged that the Brexit process was “uncomfortable” and involved “difficult choices.”

Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn slammed what he called a “botched” and “half-baked” deal, saying it “represents a huge and damaging failure” on the part of a government “in chaos.”

“The government simply cannot put to Parliament this half-baked deal that both the Brexit Secretary and his predecessor have rejected,” he said. Meanwhile, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who heads the influential pro-Brexit European Research Group, openly asked May why he should not demand her resignation