Prime Minister Theresa May has vowed to fight for her draft divorce deal with the European Union after the resignation of her Brexit secretary and other ministers put her strategy and her job in peril.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Just over 12 hours after May announced that her cabinet had agreed to the terms of the deal, Brexit minister Dominic Raab and work and pensions minister Esther McVey resigned.
Eurosceptics in May's Conservative Party said they had submitted letters calling for a vote of no confidence in her leadership.
Hostility from government and opposition MPs raised the risk that the deal would be rejected in parliament, and that Britain could leave the EU on March 29 without a safety net.
That prospect pushed the pound down as much as 2 per cent to $US1.2731, although it recovered slightly after May's statement.
The main stock index in Ireland, which is highly dependent on trade with Britain, plunged 3.8 per cent.
Two junior ministers, two ministerial aides and the Conservatives' vice chairman joined Raab and McVey in quitting.
May said she understood their unhappiness, but added: "I believe with every fibre of my being that the course I have set out is the right one for our country and all our people ...
"I am going to do my job of getting the best deal for Britain."
By seeking to preserve the closest possible ties with the EU, May has upset her party's many advocates of a clean break, and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which props up her minority government.
Meanwhile, proponents of closer relations with the EU in her own party and the Labour opposition say the deal squanders the advantages of membership for little gain.
Both sides say it effectively cedes power to the EU without securing the promised benefits of greater autonomy.
The deal will need the backing of about 320 of parliament's 650 MPs to pass.
Analysts from US bank Citi said Britain was now likely either to stay in the EU or leave without a deal.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of a Conservative eurosceptic group in parliament, said the draft was "worse than anticipated", and he had formally requested a vote of no confidence in May.
But May told parliament: "The choice is clear. We can choose to leave with no deal, we can risk no Brexit at all, or we can choose to unite and support the best deal that can be negotiated."
In parliament, MPs from all sides spent three hours mostly attacking the draft.
"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," Raab said in his resignation letter.
Others said the so-called "Irish backstop", to be used if no better way can be found to avoid future checks on the border between the British province of Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland, would tear Britain apart, leaving Northern Ireland all but inside the EU's single market.
It was this arrangement, which sees Britain and the EU establishing a single customs territory, but Northern Ireland aligned more closely with the EU, that spurred most criticism.
EU leaders are ready to meet on November 25 to sign off on the divorce deal, or Withdrawal Agreement, but French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe summed up the uncertainty when he said events in London
A group of EU states including France also raised objections to what has been agreed so far on fishing between the EU and UK after Brexit, diplomatic sources said.
Australian Associated Press