The Universities Minister Sam Gyimah has resigned over the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal.
The MP has been in the post since January after taking over from Jo Johnson, who also resigned over the deal last month.
In total, seven Government ministers have now resigned since the Prime Minister unveiled her draft Withdrawal Agreement, due to go to a vote in the House of Commons a week on Tuesday.
Announcing his resignation in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Gyimah told the paper:
“Britain will end up worse off, transformed from rule makers into rule takers. It is a democratic deficit and a loss of sovereignty the public will rightly never accept.”
Disagreement surrounds the issue of a physical border in Ireland, which the Government is trying to avoid by temporarily keeping all of the UK in the customs union for a ‘transition period’.
If no solution to the border issue has been found by the end of that period, due to end in 2020, the UK would remain in the customs union until one has been found – but would need the consent of the EU for whenever they wanted to leave it.
Despite not even completing a full year in the role, Mr Gyimah has overseen radical changes to the higher education sector during his eleven months in office.
These include the launch of the new universities regulator, the Office for Students, and the new gold, silver and bronze grading system for university degrees.
Mr Gyimah’s successor is yet to be announced.