Prime Minister Theresa May's government is facing a huge backlash over her Brexit deal that is being mauled by opponents, allies and mutinous members of her party.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab sensationally quit on Thursday, as did work and pensions minister Esther McVey, minister of state for Northern Ireland Shailesh Vara and Suella Braverman, a junior minister in Britain's Brexit ministry.
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett said: "The Government is falling apart before our eyes as for a second time the Brexit secretary has refused to back the Prime Minister's Brexit plan.
"This so-called deal has unravelled before our eyes."
In his letter to the Prime Minister, Raab said the deal represented a "very real threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom" because of provisions for Northern Ireland.
He also said he could not accept "an indefinite backstop arrangement" for the Irish border.
He said: "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 added: "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.
"This is, at its heart, a matter of public trust."
Hours earlier, Vara had quit, saying May's agreement "leaves the UK in a halfway house with no time limit on when we will finally be a sovereign nation".
McVey, meanwhile, cited a lack of control over money, law, borders and trade policy under a deal she felt kept the UK too close to Brussels.
"It will be no good trying to pretend to (Britons) that this deal honours the result of the referendum when it is obvious to everyone it doesn't," she wrote.
"I cannot defend this, and I cannot vote for this deal. I could not look my constituents in the eye were I to do that," she said in a resignation letter posted on Twitter.
European Union leaders will meet on November 25 to endorse the divorce deal.
May now faces the much more perilous struggle of getting parliament to approve the deal.
British journalists said anger among Brexit-supporting Conservative lawmakers was so high that they might call for a vote of no confidence in her leadership.
There was no confirmation.
ITV reporter Robert Peston said enough demands for a no confidence vote could be lodged by lunchtime on Thursday.
The ultimate outcome for the United Kingdom remains uncertain: scenarios range from a calm divorce to rejection of May's deal, potentially sinking her premiership and leaving the bloc with no agreement, or another referendum.
With Press Association
Australian Associated Press
