British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s younger brother, Jo, announced his resignation as a minister and Conservative lawmaker on Thursday.
He said he felt “torn between family loyalty and the national interest.
“It’s been an honour to represent Orpington (in south-east England) for 9 years and to serve as a minister under three PMs,” tweeted pro-EU Conservative Jo Johnson, 47.
“In recent weeks I’ve been torn between family loyalty and the national interest – it’s an unresolvable tension & time for others to take on my roles as MP & Minister,” he wrote, adding the hashtag #overandout.
Johnson supported his brother’s government by voting against a bill to stop a no-deal Brexit this week and by backing his call for a snap election.
Fellow pro-EU Conservative David Gauke replied to Jo Johnson that many lawmakers had “had to wrestle with conflicting loyalties in recent weeks”.
“None more so than Jo. This is a big loss to parliament, the government and the Conservative Party,” Gauke tweeted.
Gauke this week joined opposition parties in voting to block Boris Johnson from withdrawing Britain from the EU without an exit deal on Oct. 31.
He said the Conservatives told him on Wednesday that he was “barred from being re-selected” as a parliamentary candidate for the party after he opposed the government in a key vote on the no-deal Brexit bill on Tuesday.
Ian Murray, a lawmaker from the main opposition Labour party, said the younger Johnson’s resignation was “devastating.”
“Even Boris Johnson’s brother knows that he can’t be trusted to make decisions in the national interest,” Murray tweeted.
Jo Johnson campaigned for Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum and has backed calls for a second referendum.
Boris Johnson, 55, has pledged to take Britain out of the EU on Oct. 31, with or without an exit deal.
In spite of their differences over Brexit, Jo Johnson was handed a post in the new cabinet when his brother became prime minister in late July.
Germany supports idea to boost peacekeeping in Congo
The German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, on Thursday supported the idea of making the world’s largest UN peacekeeping mission in Congo more efficient.
“It won’t work without a military component. It won’t work without additional skills,” Maas said in the capital Kinshasa, on his last day of a two-country visit to Africa.
The minister also recommended better coordination between peacekeeping and humanitarian activities.
The resource-rich central African nation has suffered several civil wars in recent decades during which millions of people were killed.
An estimated 160 rebel groups with a total of more than 20,000 fighters are still active in Congo’s east.
The UN, which has tried to stabilise the country for the past 20 years with a 15,000 strong peacekeeping force, will present a new deployment strategy in October.
In December, the UN Security Council scheduled to decide on an extension of the peacekeeping force’s mandate.
The precarious security situation in eastern Congo is also hampering the fight against an Ebola epidemic, which has caused more than 2,000 deaths over the past 13 months.
Maas visited UN peacekeepers in the city of Goma in eastern Congo on Thursday and later met with the leadership of the peacekeeping force in Kinshasa.
Later on Thursday, he was scheduled to speak with President Felix Tshisekedi.
On Wednesday, Maas met with the UN Emergency Ebola Response Coordinator, David Gressly in Goma, promising to investigate the possibility of providing additional financial aid to assist Congo in fighting the epidemic.
He also met with Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege, who has been campaigning for decades in support of victims of sexual wartime violence.
Earlier this week, the minister visited the volatile East African nation of Sudan.
