May down but not yet out

BRITISH Prime Minister Theresa May reached out to her opponents on Wednesday after narrowly surviving a confidence vote sparked by the crushing defeat in parliament of her Brexit deal.

After a tumultuous 24 hours she admitted voters might find “unsettling”, she conceded the divorce terms she struck with the EU had been roundly rejected, but vowed to work to find an alternative.

“Now MPs have made clear what they don’t want, we must all work constructively together to set out what parliament does want,” May said in a televised evening address to the nation.

On Tuesday, MPs dealt the prime minister the heaviest drubbing in modern British political history by rejecting the divorce agreement by a stunning 432 votes to 202.

But May emerged victorious on Wednesday night in a confidence vote triggered by the opposition Labour party, winning 325 votes to 306.

She set out a schedule of cross-party talks that began immediately with meetings with the Scottish nationalist, Welsh nationalist and the pro-EU Liberal Democrat leaders.

“We must find solutions that are negotiable and command sufficient support in this House,” she had earlier told parliament. However, opposition leaders set out a list of demands for co-operating, including discussing delaying Brexit beyond March 29, and ruling out the possibility that Britain crashes out without any deal at all.

May is working on the tightest-possible deadline as Britain prepares to leave the bloc that for half a century defined its relations with the rest of the world.

May must return to parliament on Monday with a Plan B that she and her team intend to negotiate with various MPs through the weekend.

AFP