By Ben Kerrigan-
Three more MPs, this time from the Tory party, have resigned to join an independent group, set up by former Labour MPs.
Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen have all confirmed their departure from the Conservative party to join the break away group formed by seven former members of the Labour party . The trio have written to Theresa May to formalise their decision.Wollaston says it is extraordinary that “just at the point when we can start to reverse austerity, we are knowingly and deliberately about to send ourselves back into an economic downturn”.
Heidi Allen says the three MPs had given up on persuading May to change her path on Brexit. “This is designed to be a wake-up call,” she says. “This is a taste of more to come.”. “The rightwing, the hardline anti-EU awkward squad are running the Conservative party from top to toe,” Allen said. Ms Allen added the prime minister had been bullied into submission” by the European Research Group (ERG) and was “dragging the country and parliament kicking and screaming to the edge of a no deal abyss.”
A significant number of other MPs in all parties were ‘on the brink’ of following the first 11 MPs to abandon their parties and join the new group. The party break ups are one of the biggest in the last three decades.
The PM said she was “saddened”, but her party would “always offer… decent, moderate and patriotic politics”. Their decision to integrate with the independent group that broke away from the Labour party follows months of discontent over the difficulty in establishing a deal for leaving the European Union.
The three criticised the government’s “disastrous handling” of Brexit and said it had undone “all the efforts to modernise” the Conservatives. They said it represented “the centre ground of British politics”.At a press conference on Wednesday, Ms Soubry said of the Conservative party: “The battle is over, the other side has won.
“The right wing, the hard-line anti-EU awkward squad that have destroyed every leader for the last 40 years are now running the Conservative Party from top to toe. They are the Conservative Party.
The departure of the three MPs has reduced the government’s working majority to nine MPs, and Ms Allen claimed there were “absolutely” other colleagues “keen” to join the group.
A tweet from the Independent Group welcomed the new members, adding: “Both our parties are broken. We are going to #ChangePolitics for the better.”
They wrote: “We find it unconscionable that a party, once trusted on the economy, more than any other, is now recklessly marching the country to the cliff edge of no deal.”