Brexit Proxy Wars: Remain-Supporting Junior Minister Resigns from Boris Government

The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Oliver JJ Lane

The latest proxy-battle over Brexit has seen a junior minister resign from Boris Johnson’s government, as Remainers move against the prime minister’s enforcer-in-chief Dominic Cummings.

Douglas Ross, Boris Johnson’s junior minister for Scotland, resigned on Tuesday morning, citing his opposition to Boris Johnson’s Brexit-focussed enforcer Dominic Cummings in his public letter to the prime minister.

Getting Mr Cummings — variously described as either a political genius or a Svengali-type figure — out of Downing Street has become a matter of some urgency, with all major UK newspapers and the Westminster political establishment united in seeing his demise. Perhaps confounding expectations, the prime minister has so far stood by his top adviser, and at a polite but firm press conference, Monday afternoon Mr Cummings himself defended his record and said he had not offered his resignation.

As Breitbart London noted on Sunday, Dominic Cummings is likely to have intensified ill-feeling towards him of late, as he was able to scotch a plan to delay Brexit concocted while he and his boss the prime minister were away from work, ill with coronavirus. Between his dogged determination to deliver Brexit — the mandated will of the British people — and his dogmatic hatred of the embedded power of the British Deep State, Mr Cummings has become public enemy number one for the theoretically-impartial Civil Service.

Tuesday’s resignation is a timely reminder that, while Boris Johnson’s government is the most pro-Brexit — perhaps the only pro-Brexit — government in history, and the present Parliament is the most pro-Brexit ever, the fact remains that the majority of the cabinet were Remain-supporters at the time of the referendum. This is in part a reflection of how few thoroughly pro-Brexit politicians there are in Westminster.

Strangely, British newspaper the Daily Telegraph — the UK title closest to the governing Conservative Party — appears to be providing covering fire for Ross, citing an unnamed “former minister” in their daily politics blog which offered that the Scottish MP is “a big Boris fan from the get-go and a Brexiter.” This position appears to reflect a revised view of Douglas Ross, who by his own account in earlier times declared himself in favour of Remain, and opposed Mr Johnson in the first round of the leadership vote.

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