UK Cabinet ministers quit -- BBC

LONDON, Nov 15 (KUNA) -- Britain's Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has resigned saying he "cannot in good conscience support" the UK's draft Brexit agreement with the EU, the BBC reported on Thursday.
He was swiftly followed out of the door by Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey and junior Brexit minister Suella Braverman.
It comes hours after Prime Minister Theresa May announced that she had secured the backing of her cabinet for the deal.
The prime minister is currently making a Commons statement on the Brexit agreement, telling MPs it was not a final agreement, but brings the UK "close to a Brexit deal".
She said the agreement would deliver the Brexit people voted for and allow the UK to take back control of its "money, laws and borders".
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn: "This is not the deal the country was promised and Parliament cannot and I believe will not accept a false choice between this bad deal and no deal." Dominic Raab - a Leave supporter who was promoted to the cabinet to replace David Davis when he quit in protest at Mrs May's Brexit plans - is the most high-profile minister to quit the government.
He was closely involved in drafting the 585-page document, which sets out the terms of Britain's departure from the EU.
In his resignation letter, Mr Raab said he could not support it because the regulatory regime proposed for Northern Ireland "presents a very real threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom".
And, he added, the "backstop" arrangements aimed at preventing the return of a hard Irish border would result in the EU "holding a veto over our ability to exit".
"Above all, I cannot reconcile the terms of the proposed deal with the promises we made to the country in our manifesto at the last election," he told the prime minister.
In her resignation letter, Esther McVey told Mrs May the agreement does not "honour the result of the referendum, indeed it does not meet the tests you set from the outset of your premiership".
"We have gone from no deal is better than a bad deal to any deal is better than no deal," she added.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, a ministerial aide at the education department, has also quit.
Northern Ireland minister Shailesh Vara was the first to resign over Mrs May's agreement on Thursday morning, saying, it "leaves the UK in a halfway house with no time limit on when we will finally be a sovereign nation".
Conservative Brexiteer MP Anne Marie Morris told BBC News she believed enough Tory MPs had now submitted letters of no-confidence in the prime minister to trigger a leadership contest.
She said there was enough time to install a new prime minister and change course on Brexit, adding: "Now is not the time for her leadership." Jacob Rees Mogg - who heads an influential group of Tory Brexiteers - told MPs the prime minister had gone back on her previous commitments over Brexit and he asked her why he too should not submit a letter of no confidence in her. (end) rk