Top British Minister Amber Rudd Quits over Brexit

Late on Saturday, Work and Pensions Secretary, Amber Rudd, quit and joined growing list of MPs to change affiliation since 2017.

Ruud, who had also resigned as home secretary in Theresa May’s Cabinet after the Windrush scandal, in a letter to the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, said that she was resigning because "I no longer believe leaving with a deal is the government's main objective."

On Sunday Johnson appointed Thérèse Coffey as the Work and Pensions Secretary,  a position which oversees some of the government's most controversial policies.

Coffey, an Environment Minister and MP for Suffolk Coastal, backed Remain during the EU referendum in 2016.

In January 2016, she voted to reject a proposed rule that would have required private landlords to make their homes “fit for human habitation”.

According to Parliament’s register of interests, 72 of the MPs who voted against the amendment were landlords who derive an income from a property which included Coffey at the time.

Rudd has already congratulated her successor, tweeting: "Congratulations to my good friend @theresecoffey on her appointment as Secretary of State @DWP. I know she will do an excellent job in a first rate department."

Rudd's departure was a new defeat for the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, as he tries to steer his divided country through its biggest political crisis since World War II. 

"The government is expending a lot of energy to prepare for 'No Deal' but I have not seen the same level of intensity go into our talks with the European Union," she wrote in her resignation letter.

Rudd, also a former Interior Minister who voted remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum, also slammed Johnson's expulsion of Conservative lawmakers, who included the grandson of Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill and two former Finance Ministers, was an "assault on decency and democracy."

"This short-sighted culling of my colleagues has stripped the party of broad-minded and dedicated Conservative MPs. I cannot support this act of political vandalism," wrote Rudd, who said she is also quitting the Conservative party and will sit as an independent.

Rudd´s move came just days after the Prime Minister's own brother, Jo Johnson, quit the government, saying he was "torn between family loyalty and the national interest."

After Rudd became an independent and Angela Smith joined the Liberal Democrats, now more than one in ten MPs have changed their party allegiances in the current parliament.

Figures show that 73 members have changed party affiliation – including becoming independent or joining a new party – since Theresa May was elected with a minority government in 2017.

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