May’s cabinet in chaos as Brexit minister quits

British Prime Minister Theresa May suffered a huge blow yesterday as Dominic Raab quit as her Brexit secretary 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.

The pound sterling lost nearly one percent of its value against the dollar following Raab’s resignation, wiping out gains since Tuesday as the draft agreement emerged. At 0900 GMT, the pound stood at around $1.2870, compared to $1.2992 at 2200 GMT on Wednesday. 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. European Council President Donald Tusk said in Brussels that unless problems emerge as EU member states examine the deal, he will host a summit to sign the accord in Brussels on November 25.

May’s governing centre-right 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. Raab had backed Britain leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum, while Vara wanted the UK to stay in the bloc.