Rye MP, Amber Rudd, announced on Saturday that she had resigned from the Cabinet and her position as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. She has also relinquished the Conservative whip. She has not, however, resigned from the party
The reasons she has given are two fold: first she was clearly upset by what she regards as the cavalier and unjust treatment of the 21 Conservative MPs who were recently stripped of their party membership and ordered to be deselected. She regards them as valuable moderate members of the party who have shown their worth and should not have been treated in this way. Her hope is that a way will be found to re-admit them back into the Party before too long.
Her second reason was the current situation over Brexit. Although originally voting to remain, she accepted the result of the referendum, worked with the previous Prime Minister to try and achieve a managed exit from the EU – although she abstained from one vote that the Government lost – and agreed to work with the current Prime Minister to the same end.
However, she felt that, although a great deal of effort was being expended on preparing for a no-deal Brexit, there was disproportionately less effort on negotiating a settlement.
When asked on the BBC, recently, whether she intended to fight the next general election as a Conservative, she replied emphatically yes. She was, she said, still a member of the party and had every intention of fighting to retain her constituency seat of Hastings and Rye.
Amber Rudd first entered parliament as the local MP in 2010 with a majority of just under 2,000. This she increased in the following general election but in Theresa May’s disastrous election campaign of 2017, despite appearing in the Prime Minister’s place at the party leaders TV debate, where it was accepted by political-watchers that her performance was good and probably better than Mrs May, herself, would have done, this was slashed to just 346.
Image Credits: John Minter .