'My country must come before my party': One of the Tory party's most anti-Brexit MPs threatens to quit

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August 13, 2017 9:36 AM

"Mrs May must waste no time in taking on the ‘Hard Brexiteers’ and making it clear that she sides with responsible Cabinet Ministers," she wrote for the Mail.

Tory backbencher Anna Soubry.

LONDON — Anna Soubry, a former Conservative minister and one of the party's most anti-Brexit MPs has threatened to quit the Tories if Prime Minister Theresa May "sides with the hardliners" in the party over leaving the EU.

Writing for the Mail on Sunday, Soubry — who served as Minister of State for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise under previous PM David Cameron — argues that the Conservative Party could split down the middle unless May takes counsel from the "wise owls" within her cabinet.

"Mrs May must waste no time in taking on the ‘Hard Brexiteers’ and making it clear that she sides with responsible Cabinet Ministers – such as Chancellor Philip Hammond – who appreciate that we need a sensible Brexit transition period to avoid plunging this country headlong into an economic nightmare," Soubry writes.

"In other words – the wise owls should be ruling the roost."

May must stand up to the so-called "ideologues" within the Tories, or risk further alienating the large proportion of the parliamentary party that wanted to stay in the European Union and now want a softer Brexit with a long transition period, Soubry added.

In the article two of May's most senior ministers said that the UK will seek a transition deal for leaving the EU, but that any deal will not be a "back door" to staying in the bloc and would be limited in its time period.

"I am beginning to wonder whether some of the people in charge of Leave actually understand the value of the single market," she said in October 2016.

"The idea that we will leave the EU and then negotiate some excellent free trade deal with the rest of Europe and not take the free movement of labour is the stuff of the fairies.”

Soubry also told the prominent left-leaning magazine the New Statesman in March that

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