Britain's government teeters as Prime Minister Theresa May tries to sell Brexit deal
British Prime Minister Theresa May urged Parliament on Thursday to approve a draft Brexit deal her government had negotiated with the European Union. But before she spoke, several Cabinet ministers had resigned in protest of her deal, including Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey, and the junior Brexit, education, and Northern Ireland ministers. Britain's pound plummeted after Raab's resignation.
Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn called the deal a "huge and damaging failure," suggesting Labour MPs won't vote for the agreement, and with defections in May's Conservative Party, it's not clear she has the votes, endangering her tenure as prime minister. May asked lawmakers to approve the divorce deal "in the national interest," arguing that she made "the right choices, not the easy ones," and that having no deal would be worse than the agreement she reached to cleave Britain from the EU while maintaining close ties. She emphasized that this is just a draft, while lawmakers jeered and called on her to resign.
May got a majority of her Cabinet to approve the agreement on Wednesday, though many of them did not look happy about it. Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union on Friday, March 29, 2019.
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