Three Tory MPs join new breakaway group over Brexit row

Three British politicians quit the governing Conservative party Wednesday to join the newly established group of independent MPs.

The decision to leave, announced by Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen and Anna Soubry, immediately caused a major headache for Prime Minister Theresa May.

Her minority government was being shored up by the 10 MPs belonging to the Northern Ireland-based Democratic Unionist party (DUP). That gave May a wafer-thin majority in the House of Commons.

On Monday, seven Labour MPs resigned from the main opposition Labour party and were joined Tuesday night by an eighth Labour MP, Joan Ryan who represents the London constituency of Enfield North.

The setting up of the Independent Group of MPs, the biggest shake-up in British politics since the 1980s, could pave the way for an all-new centrist political party.

In a letter to May, the three Conservative quitters said: "We no longer feel we can remain in the party of a government whose policies and priorities are so firmly in the grip of the ERG and the DUP."

ERG, short for the European Research Group, is a research support group for those of Conservative Members of Parliament who choose to subscribe. It opposes Britain's EU membership.

"Brexit has re-defined the Conservative party -- undoing all the efforts to modernize it. There has been a dismal failure to stand up to the hard line ERG which operates openly as a party within a party, with its own leader, whip and policy."

They said in their letter the final straw was the government's handling of Brexit.