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Reuters
LONDON
Business leaders expressed growing alarm on Thursday as a draft Brexit agreement seen as the only chance of preserving some stability in UK-EU trading threatened to unravel, sending stock prices and the pound plunging.
Just 12 hours after British Prime Minister Theresa May announced that her cabinet had agreed to the terms of the draft agreement, Brexit minister Dominic Raab and work and pensions minister Esther McVey quit, saying they could not support it.
Their departures and those of other, junior ministers, revived the spectre for business of Britain leaving the European Union without a deal next March, and sent shares in British housebuilders, retailers and banks tumbling.
The political situation remains uncertain," German carmaker BMW said in a statement."We must therefore continue to prepare for the worst-case scenario, which is what a no-deal Brexit would represent.
"We continue to call on all sides to work towards a final agreement which maintains the truly frictionless trade on which our international production network is based."
The European Union is Britain's biggest trading partner, accounting for 44 percent of UK exports and 53 percent of imports to the UK.
After 45 years of membership, industries including defence, cars and aerospace have created intricate supply chains that rely on smooth,"just-in-time" delivery of thousands of parts across the sea that divides Britain from the continent. Business leaders fear that the country could stumble towards a no-deal Brexit where border checks block ports and fracture the supply chains that support the likes of Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems .
Karen Betts, the head of the Scotch Whisky Association, said a no-deal Brexit would cause"considerable difficulties" for the industry and increase cost and complexity. It accounts for around 20 percent of all UK food and drink exports.
A senior executive at one of Britain's biggest banks said this was the most disastrous government he had ever seen.
