British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday lost his already wafer-thin working majority of one in Parliament as one of the Conservative Party MPs defected to the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrat party over an ongoing showdown over his strategy for the country's impending exit from the European Union (EU). Philip Lee defected just minutes before Johnson took to the despatch box at the House of Commons for his first parliamentary confrontation with MPs after a long summer recess. The MP for Bracknell conspicuously took his seat on the Opposition benches as Johnson began addressing the Commons. "The party I joined in 1992 is not the party I am leaving today," he said in a statement, accusing his former party of "political manipulation, bullying and lies".

The former justice minister said the government was "pursuing a damaging Brexit in unprincipled ways", putting lives and livelihoods at risk. In a letter to Johnson, Lee said the Conservative Party "had become a narrow faction in which one's Conservatism is measured by how recklessly one wants to leave the European Union". Addressing the Commons after days of verbal clashes over his ¿do or die¿ Brexit pledge by the October 31 deadline, Johnson told MPs he wanted a negotiated exit from the EU and insisted there was "real momentum" behind the talks. But he warned that plans by rebel Tory MPs to pass legislation effectively blocking a no-deal exit would "destroy any chance of negotiating a new deal".