Rehman Chishti resigns from government to spend more time with his other jobs

It’s a busy day in Westminster with ministers resigning from government all over the place, a potential leadership challenge, and a fair chance that the government won’t make it until the end of the week.

None of which would be particularly exciting on a local level, until Rehman Chishti, MP for Gillingham and Rainham, announced he was resigning his position as Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party and as the Trade Envoy to Pakistan.

His full letter is below, where he makes it clear that he cannot support the current EU Withdrawal Agreement currently on offer. Chishti is the seventh government minister to resign over this today.

Anyone worrying that Rehman won’t have much to do in the coming months needn’t do so. He still remains the MP for Gillingham and Rainham, still sits on the Home Affairs Select Committee, and he is still the councillor for Rainham Central. Of course, if that’s not enough, there’s often opportunities available with, for example, Saudi think tanks.

It’s hard to predict what this means for Rehman’s political future given it’s hard to predict what will happen in the next two hours at this stage. Rehman has seemingly been preparing for this eventuality though.
In recent months, he has been cozying up to potential leadership contenders like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, so it seems unlikely that this will be the end of his career at a national level.

Do you agree with his decision? What will happen to him next? Is there a chance he’ll have time to turn up to more than 44% of local council meetings now? Tell us in the comments below.

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