LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May suffered a huge blow on Thursday as Dominic Raab quit as her Brexit secretary, saying he “must resign” over the proposed EU withdrawal agreement.
“I cannot reconcile the terms of the proposed deal with the promises we made to the country in our manifesto,” he said in his resignation letter, published on his Twitter account.
“I believe that the regulatory regime proposed for Northern Ireland presents a very real threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom,” he said.
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”.
“No democratic nation has ever signed up to be bound by such an extensive regime, imposed externally without any democratic control over the laws to be applied, nor the ability to decide to exit the arrangement,” he wrote.