Brexiteer MPs accused of 'treachery' after humiliating defeat for May
A government minister has accused Brexiteer MPs of “treachery” as they inflicted a humiliating defeat on Theresa May over her Brexit plans.
Business minister Richard Harrington even told rebels to join Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party in an extraordinary attack on his own colleagues in the Conservative party.
It comes as a large number of hardline Eurosceptics abstained and others voted down a motion of support for Mrs May’s Brexit strategy in Parliament on Thursday evening.
The prime minister had asked MPs not only to back her aim of renegotiating the Irish backstop, but also to state their opposition to no deal – a move Brexiteers could not accept.
Harrington vented his fury at the European Research Group (ERG) of Conservative Brexiteers, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, in comments likely to widen divisions in his party even further.
READ MORE: May hit by humiliating revolt in Commons over block to no-deal Brexit
Mr Harrington told The House magazine: “The Prime Minister has done a pretty good job of standing up to them till now, but they were drinking champagne to celebrate her losing her deal and I regard that as being treachery.
“I read that Nigel Farage is setting up a new party called ‘Brexit’ and if I were them I’d be looking at that, because that seems to reflect their views more than the Conservative party does.
“They should read carefully what that party’s got to offer, because in my view they’re not Conservatives. There are people who are very solid and stringent in their views and if I were they I would be looking at a party that seems designed for them – Nigel Farage’s party.”
He also risked angering Eurosceptic colleagues still further by calling the so-called Malthouse compromise, an alternative Brexit plan favoured by many Brexiteers, “just fanciful nonsense”.
Harrington, who backed Remain in the 2016 referendum, added that resigning from the cabinet would only help the ERG and mean giving in to a “minority of a minority.”
