Elected representatives often face tensions between competing principals, such as their constituents and the political party they belong to. While such cases are well discussed in theory, less attention has been put to empirically scrutinizing them. If tension arises between the party interests and those of the constituents, what explains the behavior of these agents-of-two-principles? The present study exploits the Brexit vote – which allowed MPs to be directly informed about their constituency’s preferences on a specific policy issue ex-ante, before they take action – to explore this question. Empirically, we employ regression analysis to predict the votes on Theresa May’s Brexit Deal as a function of MP’s partisanship and the vote of their constituency. We show that while for Labor MPs, the more their constituency voted Leave the greater chance they had to support May’s Deal (and vote against their party line), for Conservatives the opposite was the case – the more their constituency voted Leave the less chance they had to support the Deal. We proceed to identify cross-pressured MPs and compare their floor speeches – focusing on MPs sources of legitimacy for action – with those who were not cross-pressured. Our preliminary findings show considerable differences between these two groups of representatives, in the degree to which they refer to the good of the whole citizenry, their constituency and party when justifying their actions. Our findings shed light on the representational dilemma and its consequences, which are inherently linked to representative democracy and its pitfalls.