BRITAIN’S most senior official in charge of negotiating the country’s exit from the European Union resigned on Sunday, accusing Prime Minister Theresa May of undermining Brexit with her plan to keep close trade ties with the bloc. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption David Davis explains why he resigned

David Davis, who has been leading UK negotiations to leave the EU, has quit his role as Brexit Secretary

He told the BBC that he was no longer the best person to deliver the PM's Brexit plan - agreed by the cabinet on Friday - as he did not "believe" in it. In a blow to the beleaguered prime minister, Davis told May in a letter that the government’s proposals for close trade and customs ties “will leave us in at best a weak negotiating position, and possibly an inescapable one.”

Davis’s late-night resignation undermined May’s already fragile government, which has lost several ministers in the past year over sexual misconduct allegations and other scandals. Mr Davis was a strong pro-Brexit voice in a Cabinet divided between supporters of a clean break with the bloc and those who want to keep close ties with Britain’s biggest trading partner. LONDON, July 9 — David Davis resigned as Brexit Secretary in what threatens to be a major blow to UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s authority, his office said yesterday. Less than nine months remain until Britain leaves the bloc on March 29, 2019, and the EU has warned Britain repeatedly that time is running out to seal a divorce deal. In a letter to Davis, May disagreed with his characterization of her plans, saying the deal she seeks “will undoubtedly mean the returning of powers from Brussels to the United Kingdom.”

Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leader of the party’s “hard Brexit” faction, compared May’s plan to an egg so softly boiled that it “isn’t boiled at all.”

“A very soft Brexit means that we haven’t left, we are simply a rule-taker,” he said. There has yet been no on the record comment from Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, while Environment Secretary Michael Gove told the BBC on Sunday he was urging Tory MPs to support Mrs May.
David Davis resigns as the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union amid disagreements with Prime Minister Theresa May over Brexit negotiations.