The Prime Minister’s chances of getting her Brexit deal through Parliament have suffered another blow, as one of her own whips resigns his post to vote against it.
Gareth Johnson, the Brexit-supporting Member of Parliament for Dartford, has abandoned the May administration on the eve of the so-called “meaningful vote” on whether or not to accept the terms the EU has offered the Prime Minister, having struggled to “reconcile my duties as a Whip to assist the Government to implement the European Withdrawal Agreement, with my own personal objections to the agreement.”
The Tory MP is evidently unimpressed by the “clarifications” on the “backstop” arrangement included in the deal, which would see Great Britain locked into an ad hoc customs union for goods with the European Union, controlled by the bloc, and the British province of Northern Ireland essentially annexed to the EU Customs Union proper.