Theresa May faces resignations as minister issues ultimatum over Brexit

Prime Minister Theresa May arriving in Downing Street. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire - Credit: PA

A government minister has issued Theresa May with an ultimatum – she must rule out a no-deal Brexit or face resignations.

Business minister Richard Harrington warned that the patience of Tory MPs opposed to a no-deal break was running out.

‘Many of us have been to see the prime minister and have told her the absolute catastrophe and disaster for jobs and the economy that no-deal would be,’ he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

‘What she has asked us is that we give her another two weeks. The question is in two weeks time will there be an irrevocable undertaking that her deal will be brought back, amendable by exactly the kind of amendments there are today to rule out no Brexit, or, if a deal is not brought back, there is the same platform?

‘If she is prepared to give that irrevocable undertaking – which means at the despatch box or a similar instrument – many of us feel ‘Well, OK for the sake of everything, we will give her two weeks’. But that is it.’