Brexit goes off rails

British PM facing crisis as EU says it will not renegotiate deal

BRITISH Prime Minister Theresa May’s gambit to postpone a parliamentary vote on her Brexit deal to seek more concessions appears set to founder after the European Union said the bloc would not renegotiate.

Ms May’s abrupt move less than 30 hours before parliament was to vote opens a range of possibilities from a Brexit without a deal, a last-minute agreement or another EU referendum.

Admitting likely defeat on Britain’s potentially biggest political and economic shift since World War II, Ms May was laughed at by some MPs when claiming broad support for key aspects of her deal reached with the EU last month.

However, “if we went ahead and held the vote tomorrow, the deal would be rejected by a significant margin,” she told parliament of the agreement she clinched after 18 months of tortuous negotiation.

With her position in jeopardy, Ms May said she would now go back to the EU and seek reassurances over the socalled Irish “backstop”, an insurance policy to ensure no return to a hard border on Ireland.

She questioned whether parliament was trying to frustrate the democratic will of Britons to leave the EU and warned that without agreement the world’s fifth largest economy would leave on March 29 without a deal.

The EU reacted coolly, with European Council president Donald Tusk saying it was ready to discuss how to smooth ratification but that neither the withdrawal agreement nor the Irish backstop would be renegotiated. “As time is running out, we will also discuss our preparedness for a no-deal scenario,” Mr Tusk said.

An exit without a negotiated accord would undoubtedly be “extremely costly for the United Kingdom but ... damaging for the EU too”, French European Affairs Minister Nathalie Loiseau said.