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Three MPs quit UK governing party over Brexit
LONDON, Feb 20, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Three MPs quit Britain’s governing
Conservatives on Wednesday over Brexit, saying the issue had “re-defined” the
party and was “undoing all the efforts to modernise it”.
The trio said they planned to sit in parliament alongside eight former
Labour lawmakers who, also citing their opposition to Brexit, resigned from
the main opposition party this week to form the new Independent Group.
“It is with regret that we are writing to resign the Conservative whip and
our membership of the party,” Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston
said in a joint letter to Prime Minister Theresa May.
“We no longer feel we can remain in the party of a government whose
policies and priorities are so firmly in the grip of the ERG and DUP,” the
MPs stated, referring to the European Research Group, a pro-Brexit faction of
Conservative lawmakers, and the party’s Democratic Unionist allies from
Northern Ireland.
– ‘Dismal failure’ –
“There has been a dismal failure to stand up to the hard line ERG which
operates openly as a party within a party, with its own leader, whip and
policy,” they added.
The three lawmakers all backed Britain remaining in the European Union in
the 2016 referendum and have since voted against multiple elements of the
government’s Brexit legislation.
In a swift response to their resignations, May said she was “saddened” by
their decisions and thanked them for their “dedicated service to our party
over many years”.
She noted Britain’s membership of the EU has been “a source of
disagreement both in our party and our country for a long time” but would not
stop her delivering on the referendum result.
“I am determined that under my leadership the Conservative Party will
always offer the decent, moderate and patriotic politics that the people of
this country deserve,” she added.
The resignations mean the centre-right Conservatives alone are now six
votes short of a majority in parliament’s lower House of Commons.
They can command a majority of 11 thanks to their confidence and supply
arrangement for support from the DUP’s 10 MPs.
Earlier Wednesday, an eighth MP quit the Labour Party in protest against
its veteran socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn, joining the mounting internal
rebellion sparked by rows over Brexit and anti-Semitism.
Joan Ryan told BBC radio that Corbyn had “introduced or allowed to happen
in our party this scourge of anti-Semitism. It has completely infected the
party”.
Joined by the trio from the Conservatives, at 11 MPs, The Independent
Group would be the joint fourth-biggest bloc in the Commons.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1831 hrs