May makes last-ditch bid to win Brexit deal

London, January 14 

British Prime Minister Theresa May offered both a promise on workers’ rights and a reassuring letter from European Union leaders on Monday as she implored British lawmakers to support her floundering Brexit deal.

But the British leader had few concrete measures up her sleeve a day before a vote in Parliament which looks likely to see her Brexit deal rejected. A defeat on Tuesday would throw Brexit plans into disarray just weeks before the UK is due to leave the bloc on March 29.

May warned that the only alternatives to her agreement were an economically damaging, chaotic “no-deal” exit from the EU or a halt to Britain’s departure that would defy British voters’ decision in 2016 to leave the bloc.

In a speech on Monday at a ceramics factory in the pro-Brexit central England city of Stoke-on-Trent, May said: “The only deal on the table is the one (members of Parliament) will vote on tomorrow night,” May said.

Britain and the EU reached a hard-won divorce deal in November, a milestone that should have set the UK on the road to an orderly exit.

But the deal has been rejected by both sides of Britain’s Brexit divide. Many lawmakers who back leaving the EU say it leaves the UK tethered to the bloc’s rules and unable to forge an independent trade policy, while pro-Europeans argue it is inferior to the frictionless economic relationship Britain currently enjoys as an EU member.

May postponed a vote on the deal in December to avoid a resounding defeat, and there are few signs sentiment has changed significantly since then. Several previously opposed British legislators have swung behind May’s agreement in the last few days, but they remain outnumbered by those determined to vote against it.

In a bid to win support, May sought reassurances from EU leaders about the deal’s most contentious measure - an insurance policy known as the “backstop” that would keep Britain in an EU customs union to maintain an open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland after Brexit.

Pro-Brexit lawmakers worry that Britain could be trapped indefinitely in the backstop, unable to strike new trade deals around the world.

In a letter to May, European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker offered an assurance that the backstop “would only be in place for as long as strictly necessary.” 

They promised that the EU would work quickly to strike a permanent new trade deal with Britain that would render the backstop unnecessary. But the letter also reiterated the bloc’s refusal to renegotiate the divorce deal.

If May’s deal is rejected, she has until next Monday to come back to Parliament with a new proposal. — AP

"People’s faith in the democratic process and their politicians would suffer catastrophic harm if her deal is rejected and Brexit was abandoned. The other option, leaving the EU without a deal would cause turbulence for our economy, create barriers to security cooperation and disrupt people’s daily lives." —Theresa May, UK Prime Minister