BEVERLY HILLS, November 15, (THEWILL) – British Prime Minister Theresa May suffered a huge blow on Thursday as Dominic Raab quit as her Brexit secretary position over a proposed EU withdrawal agreement.
May was preparing to start selling her Brexit deal to parliament, boosted by news that Europe is preparing a rapid summit to sign off on the agreement.
But the ground began to shift beneath her when Raab said he could not back the draft deal.
“I cannot reconcile the terms of the proposed deal with the promises we made to the country in our manifesto,” he said.
“You deserve a Brexit secretary who can make the case for the deal you are pursuing with conviction.
“I must resign.”
Raab, who had been in place since July, resigned less than an hour after Shailesh Vara quit as a junior Northern Ireland Minister over the draft accord.
May had secured her cabinet’s collective approval for the agreement during a five-hour meeting on Wednesday, an important step that helped allay growing fears in the business community of a disorderly divorce.
She was due to set out the terms of the draft withdrawal agreement with the European Union to parliament’s lower House of Commons, which must approve the deal before Brexit day on March 29.
Raab had backed Britain leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum, while Vara wanted the UK to stay in the bloc.
In quitting the cabinet, Raab said he believed the regulatory regime proposed for Northern Ireland presented a “very real threat” to the United Kingdom’s integrity.
Raab added that he was opposed to “an indefinite backstop arrangement” to guarantee the Irish border remains free-flowing, saying the EU would hold “a veto over our ability to exit”.
Vara said the withdrawal agreement fails to leave Britain as a “sovereign, independent country”.
The outraged response by many MPs to the deal has heightened concerns that even when finalised, it will not pass parliament.
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