British leader Theresa May suffered a huge blow on November 15 when a series of Ministers including her Brexit Secretary quit as she tried to sell her proposed EU withdrawal agreement to a divided parliament.
Dominic Raab resigned from his role at the Brexit Ministry while a second Cabinet Minister and two junior Ministers also walked out over the draft deal.
But Ms. May insisted that while the negotiations had not been comfortable, it was the best Britain could hope for when it leaves the EU on March 29. “If we get behind a deal we can bring our country back together and seize the opportunities that lie ahead,” she told lawmakers. “The British people want us to get this done.
“The course 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.”
'I must resign'
EU leaders will hold an extraordinary Brexit summit on November 25. If they approve the agreement, the British parliament is scheduled to vote on it in early December.
But Ms. May faces stiff opposition to her agreement in the legislature from Brexit hardliners who see the deal as conceding too much to Brussels and EU supporters who want closer ties to the EU or a second referendum.
Before Ms. May spoke to MPs, Mr. 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.”
Brexit hardliner Esther McVey also quit as the Work and Pensions Secretary. “We have gone from no deal is better than a bad deal, to any deal is better than no deal. I cannot defend this, and I cannot vote for this deal,” she said.
Suella Braverman quit as a junior Brexit Minister and Shailesh Vara resigned as a junior Northern Ireland Minister over the draft accord.
In parliament, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, told Ms. May: “The government must now withdraw this half-baked deal”.
“This is not the deal the country was promised,” he said.
Pound plunges
The pound plunged against the dollar and euro as Britain's business sector gave a lukewarm verdict to the proposed agreement.
At 10 a.m. GMT, the pound was worth around $1.2784, compared with almost $1.30 late on November 14. The euro meanwhile jumped to 88.26 pence, a gain of 1.3%.
Ms. May had secured her Cabinet's collective approval for the agreement during a five-hour meeting on November 14, an important step that helped allay growing fears in the business community of a disorderly divorce.
Ms. May's Conservative Party — which does not command a Commons majority — was already split between Brexiteers and those who wanted to remain in the union, and now many on both sides of that divide oppose her deal.
