May’s fight for Brexit deal mired by all sides

BRUSSELS: Isolated at home and abroad, British Prime Minister Theresa May will be labouring against the odds once again to win backers in Parliament for her unloved Brexit deal, this time to a timetable dictated by the EU.

Almost three years after Britons voted to walk away from the EU, the bloc’s leaders seized control of the Brexit timetable from Ms May to avert a chaotic departure at the end of this month that would be disruptive for the world’s biggest trading bloc and deeply damaging for Britain.

“We are prepared for the worst but hope for the best,” European Council President Donald Tusk said. “As you know, hope dies last.”

Ms May’s mantra since Britain’s EU membership referendum in 2016 has always been about “taking back control” of UK affairs from the EU. But the process has led to her losing control – of the UK Parliament, which has twice rejected her Brexit deal, and now of the departure date.

In a move that underlined their loss of confidence in the PM, EU leaders set two deadlines for Britain to leave the bloc or to take an entirely new path in considering its EU future.

At marathon late-night talks in Brussels, they rejected Ms May’s request to extend the Brexit deadline to June 30.

Instead, the leaders agreed to extend the Brexit date until May 22, on the eve of EU Parliament elections, if she can persuade the British Parliament to endorse the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

Failing that, Ms May now has until April 12 to choose between leaving the bloc without a divorce deal and a radically new path, such as revoking Britain’s decision to leave, holding a new British referendum on Brexit or finding a cross-party consensus for a very different kind of Brexit.

Mr Tusk said there was now nothing more the EU could do to help Ms May.