Key pro-Brexit ministers Johnson, Davis quit

London: The government of British Prime Minister Theresa May was plunged into turmoil on Monday with the resignation of two senior Cabinet ministers, including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, signalling a growing split over her strategy to quit the European Union next year.

Johnson, the poster boy in the Cabinet for pro-Brexit ministers, quit, hours after the resignation of the minister in charge of Brexit negotiations, David Davis.

Their decision to leave the government came three days after May appeared to have agreed a deal with her fractured Cabinet on the UK's post-Brexit relationship with the EU. That plan is now in tatters and her political future appears uncertain.

Johnson did not arrive at the Foreign Office near Downing Street this morning, triggering speculation over further trouble ahead for the embattled British Prime Minister.

This afternoon, the Prime Minister accepted the resignation of Boris Johnson as foreign secretary. His replacement will be announced shortly. The Prime Minister thanks Boris for his work, a Downing Street spokesperson said.

May told Parliament that she did not agree with the two ex-ministers about "the best way to honour" the result of the 2016 Brexit vote.

The UK is due to leave the 28-member European Union on March 29, 2019, but the two sides have yet to agree how trade will work between them afterwards.

It had been widely reported that Johnson was not supportive of May's latest Brexit plans, thrashed out at a crucial meeting last Friday. However, there seemed to have been a shaky truce in place until Brexit minister Davis, resigned from the Cabinet stating policy differences over her exit plan from the European Union, but insisted that he had no plans of backing a revolt against May.

The Secretary of State for Exiting the EU said he remained unpersuaded about the government's negotiating position, just days after the British Prime Minister had rallied her Cabinet to a crucial away day at her country retreat, Chequers, to thrash out a collective position on the issue. May quickly announced a replacement for Davis, with Dominic Raab taking charge of day to day negotiations as the new Brexit minister. Raab, previously housing minister in the Cabinet, has been promoted largely because he was a prominent Leave campaigner during the 2016 EU referendum and likely to appeal to grumbling hard-Brexit MPs.

In his resignation letter, Davis said it looked "less and less likely" the Conservative party would deliver on the Brexit result and the commitment to leave the EU Customs Union and Single Market dubbed by many as a soft Brexit.

"The general direction of policy will leave us in at best a weak negotiating position, and possibly an inescapable one," Davis wrote. "I am also unpersuaded that our negotiating approach will not just lead to further demands for concession," he says in the letter addressed to May.