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Theresa May’s hopes of winning parliament’s backing for her Brexit deal have been plunged into fresh doubt after Jo Johnson resigned from the government and accused her of offering MPs a choice between “vassalage and chaos”, The Guardian reported.

Four months after his Brexiter brother Boris quit as foreign secretary, the remainer MP for Orpington, and erstwhile transport minister, said he could not vote for the deal that May is expected to bring back to parliament within weeks, and instead would throw his weight behind a second referendum.

“It has become increasingly clear to me that the withdrawal agreement, which is being finalised in Brussels and Whitehall even as I write, will be a terrible mistake,” he wrote in an online article.

He said the public were being offered “an agreement that will leave our country economically weakened, with no say in the EU rules it must follow and years of uncertainty for business” or a no-deal Brexit “that I know as a transport minister will inflict untold damage on our nation.

May is expected to call a special cabinet meeting next week as she tries to persuade ministers to unite behind her proposals for the Irish backstop. Brexit secretary Dominic Raab is believed to be particularly concerned about the risk of the UK being locked into a customs union with the EU indefinitely.
Johnson said the mooted deal had united him in “fraternal dismay” with Boris, who stepped down as foreign secretary in July over May’s Chequers strategy.

“My brother Boris, who led the leave campaign, is as unhappy with the government’s proposals as I am,” Johnson said. “Indeed he recently observed that the proposed arrangements were ‘substantially worse than staying in the EU’. On that he is unquestionably right.”