More europhile MPs could self-purge themselves from the Tory Party if the Government pursues a clean Brexit from the European Union — strengthening the case for No Deal for many Brexiteers.
Polls suggested over 70 percent of the Tory party’s ordinary members were either definitely for Leave or leaning to Leave ahead of the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.
Recent polling indicates that some 57 percent would now prefer a full, No Deal Brexit to one on the terms negotiated by Theresa May, on 23 percent, or remaining in the EU, on a paltry 15 percent.
A substantial majority of the party’s MPs were Remainers, however, and three of them — Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen, and Sarah Wollaston — have found respecting the referendum result so hard they have already defected to join the “Independent Group” of anti-Brexit former abour MPs — despite being elected as Tories on a “no deal is better than a bad deal” platform in 2017.
Now two more Tory europhiles are threatening to defect: former Attorney-General Dominic Grieve, widely regarded as the ad hoc leader of the “Remain Rebels” in the Tory parliamentary party, and former former education secretary Justine Greening.
“The government which I am supporting implementing a No Deal Brexit – what would I do? I would not be able to maintain my support of the Government. I would have to leave the party,” Grieve said in comments reported by the left-liberal Guardian.
Greening, meanwhile, told the BBC she would not join the Independent group “for the moment” but warned that if her efforts to block a No Deal Brexit in Parliament were not successful, “then to my mind the party that I joined many years ago and that I felt matched my aspirations… I would question if that is the Conservative party today.”
She added: “If we simply become the Brexit party… I don’t think I would be able to stay part of a party that was a Brexit party that had crashed us out of the European Union.”
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