Prime Minister Theresa May promised on Tuesday to allow parliament to delay Brexit by up to three months so that Britain would not crash out of the European Union without a deal on the scheduled departure date of March 29.
Prime Minister Theresa May promised on Tuesday to allow parliament to delay Brexit by up to three months so that Britain would not crash out of the European Union without a deal on the scheduled departure date of March 29.
FRANCE 24's Armen Georgian ‘May is giving the Parliament more power in this crucial time and she is affectively acknowledging that there is a crashing majority against a no-deal’
But she also cautioned that the extra time would not help negotiations and that she herself opposed any delay.
"Let me be clear, I do not want to see Article 50 extended," she said in reference to an EU procedure that set Brexit in motion two years ago.
"Our absolute focus should be on working to get a deal and leaving on 29 March," she said.
Three-step approach
May laid out a three-step procedure with a vote in parliament on her latest Brexit proposals by March 12. The deal's defeat would see parliament vote on the following day for the option of leaving the EU club without an agreement. "The United Kingdom will only leave without a deal on 29 March if there is explicit consent in this House for that outcome," May said.
That measure's defeat would see May's government "on 14 March bring forward a motion on whether parliament wants to seek a short limited extension of Article 50," May said.
She had long argued that the no-deal threat must be kept on the table in order to wrest essential concessions from Brussels.
But her talks with European leaders on Sunday and Monday in Egypt achieved no breakthrough and the 46-year relationship is approaching a messy breakup that could wreak havoc on global markets and create border chaos.
That possibility prompted three junior ministers to "implore" May on Tuesday to fundamentally alter her Brexit approach. "We must act immediately to ensure that we are not swept over the precipice on March 29," they wrote in the Daily Mail.
Three more senior cabinet members published a similar letter over the weekend.
Second referendum
The rebel ministers were all backing a proposed parliamentary amendment that would force May to set a new Brexit date if she fails to get better terms on the disputed issue of the Irish border.
Lawmakers will still get a chance to vote on the emergency measure on Wednesday.
Any delay will likely infuriate powerful eurosceptics in both May's government and party who fear Brexit either being watered down or reversed. And those still hoping to avert the split were boosted by the Labour Party's conditional decision to back a second Brexit referendum on Monday.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn bowed to the pressure from the more EU-friendly wing of his party by offering a way to halt "a damaging Tory Brexit".
Corbyn said on Tuesday that if May's deal "somehow does pass in some form at a later stage, we believe there must be a confirmatory public vote to see if people feel that's what they voted for".
